South Carolina Lawmakers Say No To Legalized Social Gambling

South Carolina may have one of the toughest gambling laws in the country. Games such as Monopoly and Yahtzee are illegal under a 200 year old law that deems all card and dice games punishable by law.

Lawmakers this legislative session have attempted to change the outdated law by proposing a Bill that would make it legal for house card games to be run, so long as the house did not take any money. That plan failed, so did another expanded gambling Bill.

The session has ended and no progress has been made towards expanded gambling. The second Bill would have allowed charitable organizations to hold fundraising raffles, but now that it has failed, it will be only bingo that the charities can operate.

"The state of South Carolina should have looked more closely at their gambling laws," said observer Terrence Watson, "they had the perfect opportunity to clean up an outdated law, and they blew it."

Lawmakers may re-examine the issue when the next legislative session begins. A Senate Judiciary Committee had already approved both of the Bills, but there was too much opposition for the Bills to move any farther.

May 27, 2009
Posted By Terry Goodwin
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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