The goal, according to the senator, is to take the sites offline. “Like they did with Twitter. It’s simple. Especially because they are destroying families,” Aziz said in a video published on social media this Sunday (15).

The bill that regulated betting, paved the way for online casinos and created rules for these companies to operate in Brazil was approved by Congress in December 2023. In the Senate, the proposal received Aziz’s vote, saying he was “in favor of approval, but with regulation.“

In the video, the senator criticizes the ease with which young people access ‘Bets’ sites -as the operator are called in Brazil – and virtual casinos. “Who is betting? Children, young people. Who is promoting this? Pseudo-leaders, pseudo-idols, who, instead of teaching good things to young people, children and teenagers, are inducing these people to play,” he said.

Aziz also highlights the negative financial consequences, especially for the most vulnerable. “Who loses from this? It’s always the most humble, the poorest. Families are going without food to play. What is happening to our country is absurd. We are not a small republic, here we have to have control and regulation“, he says.

As Estadão reported, a proposal from the Ministry of Finance to create a task force against gambling addiction has been on hold for a year.

In the second half of 2023, the ministry suggested creating an interministerial working group to work on the prevention and treatment of addiction to sports betting – with strong warnings about pathological dependence, the so-called gambling addiction. When contacted at the time, the Ministry of Finance stated that the group “is in the process of being built.“

In this vacuum of more comprehensive and immediate interministerial policies, proposals are already beginning to emerge in Congress to limit the activities of ‘Bets’ and the reach of online games.

Among them is a Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) that equates betting with alcohol and tobacco, imposing legal restrictions on advertising in the sector, as well as a bill to limit the value of bets per CPF.

Representative Luiz Gastão, author of the PEC, is collecting signatures in the Chamber of Deputies to be able to file the proposal. He told Estadão that Congress should have paid more attention to the debate on the negative externalities of gambling.

“I think there was a lack of greater criteria regarding access, which became easy,” the congressman told reporters. The criticism, however, extended to the government: “It is slow to take a position.“

Source: Estadão Conteúdo