A major online gambling lobby has launched an aggressive advertising campaign pushing for the legalization and regulation of online gambling in the United States. The campaign is in support of bills introduced by Representative Barney Frank and Senator Robert Menendez that would repeal the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which has been called unconstitutional yet has been upheld in the courts. Of course, the courts have a history of upholding unconstitutional laws (such as eminent domain).

The series of ads has been released by online gambling advocacy group the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, as reported by CasinoGamblingWeb.com. The ads will propose two major reasons for legalizing online gambling. The first, according to spokesman Jeffrey Sandman, is that the government needs to “start collecting taxes on the billions in revenue currently lost to unlicensed, offshore gambling operators.” He says that the extra tax money can be used to pay for healthcare reform and “other worthy programs.” The second reason given is that, according to the lobby, gambling online in an unregulated industry is much more dangerous than if the government was in charge.

I don’t know which advertising firm worked with the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative on this, but if they think they can persuade the American people to legalize online gambling with those two arguments, then they spend too much time reading The Huffington Post.

First of all, using the funds from online gambling to pay for Obamacare is kind of like me opening a lemonade stand to pay my mortgage. Even if it was able to make a significant dent, “the government needs more tax money” isn’t exactly a winning argument right now. Haven’t they been paying attention to the tea parties and healthcare protests? If not those, surely they’ve seen Obama’s approval rating plummet the more he talks about spending and expanding government programs. As for the other argument, does anyone actually think that there is an industry out there that is run better by having the government involved? The idea that government regulation of online gambling will end corruption is laughable. Creating another bureaucracy isn’t exactly high on the wish list of the average American citizen.

Instead, a smart campaign for online gambling would focus on the fact that the government has no right to tell the people how they can and can’t spend their money online, unless of course they spend it on child pornography. As it is, I think the ad campaign could do more harm than good. If UIGEA is repealed, it won’t be because the American people are eager to feed more money to the government beast.