The Cayman Islands conundrum in relation to gambling has been the historic co-existence of opposition to legalised gaming with widespread local support of outright illegal gambling in the form of the numbers game and the greyer area of high-value raffles, often ostensibly for charitable purposes.

However, in what might be a sign of the economic times and local awareness that some far-reaching changes need to be made to rescue the country from financial disaster, the latest Cayman Net News online opinion poll indicates significant local support for legalising gambling in some shape or form – whether a national lottery, casinos, or both.

Indeed, one reader makes the interesting suggestion that one or more of the no doubt many obsolete cruise ships could be leased or purchased to provide offshore gambling cruises to nearby destinations.

Many US states, notably Florida, have embraced offshore cruises – both evening and overnight – as a means of raising revenue and such an attraction would also represent a badly needed additional activity for stay-over visitors to enjoy.

Evening cruises especially do not cater to the hard-core gambler because of the inbuilt time limitation so there is no reason why they should not be allowed as an enjoyable form of entertainment for visitors.

Another factor that needs to be taken into account in the latest push to construct berthing facilities in George Town is the issue of cruise ships being allowed to open their casinos while in port.

On most itineraries the ship is in port no longer than early evening and the casinos are opened as the ship heads out to sea on its way to the next stop.

If there is any hope or expectation that some cruise lines might be persuaded to berth overnight in Grand Cayman, this notion will be dead on arrival if the onboard casinos are not allowed to open, a significant loss of revenue for the cruise line.

Our close neighbour Jamaica has been working on the introduction of casino style gambling as a means of attractive substantial inward investment, as well as enhancing the visitor experience.

And anything that Jamaica does to position itself as a more attractive tourist destination will tend to have a correspondingly adverse effect on our own attractiveness for potential visitors.

The Jamaican government has wisely chosen to ensure that new casino gambling will provide substantial investment benefits. In particular, applications for casino licences will only be considered if certain conditions are met. These are: a minimum investment of US$1.5 billion and the construction of not less than 1,000 rooms; the casino component should be no more than 20 percent of the total project; operators of the casino will be subject to the approval of the government after appropriate due diligence including fit and proper tests and evaluation of track record; and an appropriate regulatory framework with the necessary legislation and enforcement mechanism put in place.

All of this appears to us to be eminently sensible and there is no good reason why we should not seek to emulate it, with appropriate modifications for our smaller market.

The introduction of a national lottery, on the other hand, will need far less in the way of infrastructure but would nevertheless require a degree of administration for it to be able to be operated smoothly and successfully.

Unless we were to recruit the people currently successfully operating the illegal numbers game in the Cayman Islands, there would be much to commend joining with an established operator, such as the Caribbean Lottery, which already incorporates lotteries in several Caribbean islands, including another British Overseas Territory – Anguilla.

Granted, the partnership between the Caribbean Lottery and the Turks and Caicos Islands government was short-lived, but a number of activities that the former TCI government engaged in enjoyed a less than stellar outcome.

In any event, no doubt lessons can be learned from that experience if our own government were to do the necessary research and due diligence. One such lesson is that any national lottery might best be run by the government rather than a private operator as was the case in the TCI.

One objection to joining an existing lottery system might be that the odds of winning for Cayman participants would be effectively swamped by the numbers in other countries, although the prize amounts would be correspondingly larger.

However, the odds involved and the size of the prizes has never stopped Caymanians from avidly participating in the Florida Lotto – thus demonstrating the accuracy of the remark that a lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.