The illegal sort takes in more than the drugs trade
glitzy Copacabana Palace hotel in Rio de Janeiro spun its last roulette wheel. That April Eurico Dutra, Brazil’s president, banned games of chance, shutting casinos, betting shops and bingo halls. Soon such places may reopen. On July 24th the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, issued a provisional decree to regulate sports-betting websites, which until now have operated in a legal grey area. This is the first step, perhaps, in a process that will allow all sorts of gambling.
The main goal is to raise cash. Lula wants to eliminate the federal government’s primary deficit, which is forecast to be 1.4% ofthis year, by 2024. His promise not to increase income tax makes that harder. The quest for cash became more urgent this month, when the government published a budget for 2024 that contains expensive promises, like a big increase in the minimum wage. That has shaken investors’ confidence in Lula’s macroeconomic management,.
It does not soften the hard line that Brazil has taken since Dutra’s day on “games of chance”, such as dice, bingo and roulette, most commonly played in casinos or other venues dedicated to gambling. But that prohibition may fall. A bill to legalise all gambling, languishing in Congress since 1984, has recently gained powerful supporters, including the presidents of both houses and, according to the tourism minister, “the majority of the government”.
Even legal forms of gambling pose problems. Criminals use sports-betting websites as unwitting tools in money-laundering and match-fixing schemes. Brazil has a gambling-addiction problem, though it is not as big as in some other countries. A quarter of adult Brazilians who own smartphones wagered on a match last year. An estimated 0.5% of adults are addicted, a psychiatrist told Congress in 2021. That compares with 0.7% in Britain and more than 1% in the United States.
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