Senate Pres. Alan Peter Cayetano. Photo courtesy of Avito Dalan/PNA.
Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano has renewed his campaign to prohibit online gambling nationwide, warning that constant access through smartphones has made betting increasingly difficult to regulate and easier for users to develop harmful habits.
Cayetano raised his position during the Sept. 7 deliberations on Senate Bill No. 2424, or the proposed Child Safety and Protection Act, saying regulation may no longer be enough to address the risks posed by digital gambling platforms.
“I just want to manifest my personal stand, which is lahat ng online gaming i-ban totally because it’s habit-forming, it’s addictive, and it preys mostly on the poor,” Cayetano said.
He pointed to workers who can now gamble directly from their phones, saying a person could lose an entire day’s income within minutes. For Cayetano, the accessibility of online betting makes financially vulnerable Filipinos particularly exposed to gambling-related losses.
The senator also supports restricting advertisements for online gambling. While recognizing freedom of speech, he argued that the government may impose limits on promotions involving activities associated with addiction.
Cayetano has pursued similar measures in previous Congresses. In the current 20th Congress, he and Sen. Pia Cayetano filed Senate Bill No. 30, or the proposed Ban on Online Gambling Act. He also filed Senate Bill No. 109, which seeks to prohibit online gambling advertisements across media platforms.
He said smartphones and other digital technologies have transformed gambling into an activity that can be accessed almost anywhere, making conventional regulatory measures more difficult to enforce.
“In the information age, in the digital age, in a generation that is entering this world where everything is at your fingertips because of your cell phone, napakahirap mag-regulate,” Cayetano said.
Despite those challenges, Cayetano maintained that the difficulty of enforcing restrictions should not stop the government from pursuing stronger measures to curb online gambling.
“But if we don’t try, we already failed,” he said.