The Maryland Live! Casino at Arundel Mills will introduce 24-hour operations on Dec. 27, taking advantage of new rules passed by voters last month.
Pending regulatory approval, the casino will be open round-the-clock, seven days a week. Meanwhile, Maryland Live! continues to work toward adding live table games sometime next year, and will launch a free dealer school in cooperation with Anne Arundel County Community College on Jan. 7.
The 24-hour gambling and 150 live table games are expected to require about 1,200 new workers, including 800 dealers.
Maryland Live! Currently operates 4,750 slot machines, though it may reduce that number once live table games are in place.
Does the introduction of 24-hour gambling mean much to you?
I understand that people can become addicted to certain things. I was a smoker. But I I made a choice to smoke and I made a choice to quit. Gambling is not much different. We should not curtail the activities of the many due to the problems of a few.
As a gambling analogy, we've played our last hand. We still don't have the ability to manage money in this state and five years from now nothing will have changed. Then next on the agenda will be to legalize pot and tax it and maybe introduce legalized prostitution or maybe MD will try to attract the porn industry. So if you think that casino revenue will have any positive affect on MD, have fun being naive. I lived in Vegas for 4 years and outside of a few decent communities, it's a sewer.