Yes, there are over 16 000 slot machines scattered around the country. That is a lot for 5,3 million people. Pretty much every kiosk, supermarket and gas station has a few of them.

RAY games take your money much faster.

This is another case where state causes more problems than good. It is ironic that the “Ministry of Social Affairs and Health” writes this new law.

I guess if government claims “health” and “social reasons” then it sounds more legitimate than if they tell the real reason: to protect the state monopoly.

The idea is retarded, but luckily can’t pass since we’re in EU and they will say to stop this shit if it goes anywhere forward.

I think usually when you have a mental problem and you are harmful to to yourself and your family you get sent to a institution or at least in same way your rights as a person are restricted inevitably.

Unfortunately this is of course evil-nazi -thinking(tm), because naturally we all have to suffer from the ill of others collectively.
Which is the prime reason for example alcoholics get 0 sympathy from me(because they said if I pay taxes on booze everythings just dandy and I don’t have to fucking care).

Well, trying to combat addictions by unenforcable laws hasn’t proven to be very succesful so far. Take the neverending holy war on some drugs and the Finnish alcohol monopoly, for instance.

We have Lotto though, big wins and a lot of losers.

I think the main reason behind this ridiculous suggestion for a law is that the Finnish gambling organizations decided not to launch their own online poker site when the time was ripe and now they’re losing “customers” to foreign businesses. The Swedish government’s poker site is now in the top 10 of most popular sites in the world (according to http://www.pokerscout.com/).

Or if these laws get passed, they could be prevented from transferring the money in the first place.

But cash sent via post should be ok from the gambling operations’ standpoint, right? They could simply credit the sum to the gamblers’ respective online accounts. Wouldn’t that be the best workaround?

I think it means that foreign gambling operations can’t sue Finnish residents (or their cc companies) for their gambling debts in Finnish courts. Generally, I believe you are right in that it’s nationally discriminatory; the same way Veikkaus and RAY are.

But the state will try to sidestep EU law for as long as possible, while collecting profits in the meantime. These nanny state actions are nothing more than protectionism for the state monopolies.

Just curious, what would prevent gambling operations from accepting advance cash payments sent via post?

The goal of the proposal is to encourage on-line poker rooms to bar Finnish would-be customers. Whether that works depends on whether Finnish poker players really could get their losses back. (Of course, if you’re certain to get your losses back, the risk has been reduced to the point that you’re no longer gambling.)