Casinos have cause for concern about how Internet gambling will affect their operations and revenues.

While not legal in Pennsylvania yet, it seems only a matter of time until it is implemented.

Ultimate Gaming of Las Vegas last Tuesday became the first in the United States to offer online poker, restricting it for now to Nevada. Meanwhile, New Jersey and Delaware also have legalized gambling over the Internet and expect to begin offering such bets by the end of this year.

But more serious than the concern over Internet gambling’s effect on casinos is the issue of how many more people will become problem gamblers because of it.

Gambling has ruined marriages, torn apart families and destroyed the financial well-being of households. This new layer of gambling would only add to the dangers that already exist.

And, with people having the potential of gambling away life savings in the privacy of one’s home, without other family members realizing what’s happening, the potential for widespread misery becomes greater than what already exists in other gambling venues, including casinos.

So far this year, 10 other states have considered adopting some form of Internet gambling. However, none of those has yet legalized it.

There have been efforts on behalf of passing a national law legalizing online poker, but that hasn’t materialized. And that inaction has given states the option of passing gambling laws as they see fit.

An important question is whether Internet gambling will create a new revenue stream from new players or will it result in a big drop-off in the number of casino players?

Not only are casino owners worried about the answer, but so are the people who work in them and the casinos’ vendors.

Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association, probably is correct when he observes that it’s no longer a question of if Internet gaming is coming; it’s a question of when.

And with that comes the issue of how many more individuals and families will be financially destroyed — and how soon.

As with the state lotteries, which began with a single drawing and grew into a plethora of games, gambling never has enough. And government, which authorizes this “recreation,” never has enough either.

In Pennsylvania, gambling is touted as helping senior citizens, but it’s also hurting other enterprises that won’t see the money being dumped into the one-armed bandits.

The bottom line is that Internet gambling holds the potential for more harm than good.