The Customs crackdown on gaming machines last week, sparked by the belief that the machines were being repaired with illegal parts, demonstrates the weakness of the Government's gambling policy.

To be sure, the Government has been on the horns of a dilemma on this issue from the beginning. It is generally opposed to gambling and it was also clear that the machines were damaging the Island's social fabric.

On the other hand, the machines had already been allowed in through a loophole in the outdated legislation governing gambling. To have banned the machines outright would have opened the Government up to a lawsuit for loss of earnings and so forth.

Instead, the Government decided to ban the machines as of 2004 and to ban the importation of new machines and parts immediately. Now the Customs Service believes that both new machines and new parts have been imported under allegedly false descriptions; hence the crackdown and the seizure of machines across the Island.

It remains to be seen if the allegations can be proven, but it does raise, again, the need for amendments to the legislation, which is hopelessly dated and inadequate.

Instead, Bermuda has a system in which gambling is technically illegal, yet licensed betting shops operate, bingo games are permitted, Crown and Anchor is allowed on certain dates of the year, and yes, the gaming machine industry flourishes, both in bars and nightclubs and in private homes. Indeed, in Smith's Parish, a casino by any other name flourishes, without any form of regulation at all.

Yet other forms of gambling, such as a national lottery, which might actually benefit the general population, or a casino, which some tourism industry experts believe would rescue tourism, are illegal.

Instead the Island is stuck with a system that lets some people gamble and not others, and does nothing to help those people and their families who are badly affected by this expensive and destructive addiction.

When the grandfather clause for gaming machines was put in place, it was expected that it would be a mid-step and not a solution or definitive policy on gaming laws. Since then, absolutely nothing has happened.

For the record, this newspaper opposes casinos, which would not be a panacea for tourism but a band-aid which would cause as many problems in the community as it solved.

Nor is it possible to support the gaming machines that do nothing but make a few bar owners rich. As for the licensed betting shops, they have the limited appeal of providing some "sin taxes" to the public purse, but the reality is that if people want to gamble on overseas sports, they are going to do so.

That raises the whole question of Internet gambling; if people want to gamble they can do so from the privacy of their own homes now, and trying to prevent this would be immensely difficult.

That does not mean that Bermuda should throw the door open to all forms of gambling. It does mean that Bermuda desperately needs a carefully thought out and considered policy on the whole issue.