Alberta’s Legal Drug

It was all over the news, Raymond Reshke was the Assistant Deputy Minister of Alberta Infrastructure – the second most important and powerful position in the province – and he threw it all away for gambling. He was sentenced to jail for nine months, and has lost his job and his friends all because he could not say no to gambling. Many argued that it was the Alberta government’s fault because they allowed it to happen. They are the ones who supplied him with the slot machines that he could not resist playing.

Alberta is the main gambling area of Canada, and the government makes a lot of money off of the gambling that they have legalized. There are tickets they can “scratch and win.” There are casinos that they can go play at. There are slot machines and gambling centers, all of which are begging gamblers for their money. All in all, they have fourteen different types of legalized gambling that they offer their residents.

In 1999, the Alberta Ministry of Gaming was established, and some thought that this might be the government’s chance to regulate the industry. However, it turned out that it was mostly to keep track of how much money was coming in from gambling. The province brought in millions for the government, and their population spent more than $20 billion on gambling.

Unfortunately, that also means that with all those billions of dollars coming in, there are also billions and billions being spent by people who cannot afford to lose that kind of money. Edmonton’s Problem Gambling Resources Network says that they have the second highest rate of problem gamblers in Canada. They have so many options, including the worst – slot machines – that people just keep throwing money away into them, and before they know it they have lost everything.



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