Seventy-three years ago, on April 30, 1946, the President of the country General Eurico Gaspar Dutra signed Decree Law no. 9215, restoring Article 50 of the Criminal Offenses Act of 1941. The casinos were thus closed in Brazil, including those supported by the Water Law of 1920, which allowed gaming in hydromineral and climatic resorts. Supporting the measure, the satisfied Cardinal Dom Jaime de Barros Câmara granted interviews to the newspapers. In the 71 casinos in Brazil, there was a wake atmosphere. The faces showed the feeling of about 53,200 unemployed, from those of the gambling venues and grill-rooms.
While in Brazil casinos closed, in Las Vegas in the same year of 1946, the Flamingo was inaugurated, first resort-casino of the famous Strip. Although the mafia reigned in the city until the end of the 1960s, it ended up giving its business to entrepreneurs and business groups because of the harsh regulation and supervision of the activity. In 2018, Vegas received 42 million tourists, while Brazil received 6.6 million ones.
In any case, the Brazilian population continues being a great bettor in official lotteries, horse racing, poker clubs and tournaments, sea cruises, illegal gambling houses, bingos, ‘jogo do bicho’, in border casinos, in Atlantic City in the USA or Punta del Este in Uruguay; or even on the Internet in numerous websites protected in tax havens. A volume of revenue that reaches 10 billion dollars, two thirds illegal.
In the Federal Congress, two bills (PL 442/1991 in the Chamber of Deputies and 186/2014 in the Senate) aim to regulate the entire sector and can be voted on in plenary later this second semester. To the extent that it is necessary to plan the future of policies that affect gambling and tourism in the country, it is imperative to study the history, success and failure of legalization of casinos in several countries, their socioeconomic impacts and their diverse forms of regulation.
From these studies, Brazil can broaden and improve the debate about the possible return, regulation and control of casinos in the country, in order to avoid negative impacts that often occur, such as the illegality of the venues, the leakage of foreign exchange, the addiction to gambling and the non-collection of taxes.
Recent success stories have been found in South Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, Singapore, Chile, Spain, England, Macao, Monaco and Portugal where the positive effects have been the promotion of a more complete image of destination and quality; job creation and foreign exchange; increased collection of taxes that are reverted to education, health (including combating addiction), public safety, and infrastructure; construction of new equipment and attraction of international investments; and increase the average stay of tourists.
Among all the models verified in the world, those that are most cost-effective for governments and society are those in which casinos are located in Integrated Resorts (IR), similar to the model verified in Brazil when prohibiting gaming. Today, only Ecuador accompanies us in banning casinos in South America. With courage, we have to answer which is the appropriate presence and the role of gambling in the Brazilian society.
Dario Luiz Dias Paixão, PhD in Tourism Management at the University of Málaga - Spain, researcher for 21 years and post-graduation coordinator at Positivo University
Source: GMB/ Estadão
