By Dickson Li

Early last month, a friend of mine, who has an itch for putting good money on a good poker hand, found himself in a queue at an undisclosed MRT station in the East awaiting a certain shuttle bus. Out of nowhere a sign emerged informing him, and others like him, that buses to Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) had been ceased with immediate effect, leaving him with an unsatisfied itch and a pocketful of $100.

For people like my friend who were left itching in the queue, the main question on their minds would have been “Now free buses are illegal too?”

RWS had announced the day before that they were voluntarily discontinuing their free heartland bus services and would do so by 11pm that coming Sunday, the 12^th of September. It seems the Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA) wasn’t satisfied, however, and around noon on the 10^th, the authority issued a directive that all shuttle services had to cease with immediate effect.

WHO IS THE CRA? HOW SHARP ARE THEIR TEETH?

The CRA came into being under the Casino Control Act of 2006. Under section 9 of the Act, the statutory board’s functions are to:

(a) ensure that the management and operation of a casino is and remains free from criminal influence or exploitation;

(b) ensure that gaming in a casino is conducted honestly; and

(c) contain and control the potential of a casino to cause harm to minors, vulnerable persons and society at large.

The CRA has power under Section 200 of the Act to, with the approval of the Minister for Home Affairs, make regulations in accordance with its functions. A casino operator who falls on the wrong side of those regulations can be liable for a fine not exceeding $100,000. Anyone else who fails to comply with the authority’s regulations can be slapped with a fine not exceeding $10,000, or a jail term not exceeding 12 months or both.

WHAT EXACTLY DID RWS DO WRONG?

According to a report by the Today newspaper on the 11^th of September, “Regulator puts immediate brake on IR shuttles”, when contacted by Today the CRA “cited the Casino Control (Advertising) Regulations 2010, which allows advertising only in specified destinations such as the airport or hotels. Prior approval of the CRA must be obtained.”

The Casino Control (Advertising) Regulations 2010 that the CRA was referring to was drawn up in February this year. Of interest to the issue at hand is Part 2 of the regulations which defines casino advertisement as

“any writing, object, still or moving visual image or message or audible message, or any combination of them, which —

(a) contains any express or implied inducement, suggestion or request to visit any casino;

(b) expressly or impliedly leads to, induces, urges, promotes or encourages the playing of any game in any casino; or

(c) being designed to publicise or to promote the casino or the playing of any game in the casino, mentions, illustrates or depicts —

(i) any brand name, trade mark or service mark of a casino; or

(ii) any pictorial device commonly associated with any brand name, trade mark or service mark of a casino;

As the Minister of Community Development, Youth and Sports Dr Vivian Balakrishnan said in parliament, the purpose of implementing the regulations on advertising was “to prevent the casinos from targeting the locals as their principal market”. This purpose is incontestable. If you adopt a purposive approach to reading Part 2, you might argue that, broadly speaking, since the aim of regulating advertisements is to prevent the casinos from extending their tentacles to the local market, then for the same aims the same regulation ought to ban shuttle buses from running into the heartlands.

Textually, however, doing this would be a stretch. Reading the terms in the widest sense possible, one might say that the words on the RWS buses: “Hop on for a TRULY REWARDING experience”, coupled with the RWS logo and a picture of the resort, constitute a moving advertisement on buses trying to induce people to visit the casino. But this is barely reasonable.

What if the buses were nondescript and had only tiny, bashful signs hinting that this bus would bring people to Sentosa for free? The buses would no longer carry any “visible message”, “message” or “audible message” encouraging the playing of games at the casino, inasmuch as the bus itself is intrinsically not a message. The buses would still function to bring locals from the heartlands to the casinos, hence frustrating the purpose of the regulations.

It cannot be fair to adopt such a reading of the regulations. Following this logic, an RWS goods vehicle with neon signs that scream the words “casino” would then be more guilty than a 50-seater chartered bus, with no hint of it having anything to do with RWS apart from the driver’s RWS T-shirt, filled with 50 retirees headed for the casinos.

For the sake of consistency and clarity of the Casino Control (Advertising) Regulations, it would seem more fitting that if the bus services had been halted by regulation drawn up under that envisioned in Section 200(f) of the Casino Control Act, that the CRA might make regulations in respect of:

(f) the facilities and amenities to be provided for patrons of, and inspectors on duty in, a casino and the maintenance of those amenities.

Buses can clearly be construed as amenities for the patrons of a casino, and there would be no ambiguity here in regulating them.

The introduction of casinos to communities has always been met with unease. For instance, when Atlantic City’s casinos first opened in 1978, regulations forced them to be closed between 6am and 10am in the belief that it would help avoid the continuous gambling atmosphere of Las Vegas. The casinos now run 24 hours a day.

Going ahead, in such teething times back home when regulation is still relatively underdeveloped, we can continue to expect the casinos to “test the boundaries” of what can be done. There can be no harm in taking a paternalistic stance and sending a clear message to the casinos that the local market is off-limits to them. There should, however, be consistency in applying regulations so as not to muddle the distinction between morally right policies and legally sound policies.