Did you ever lose time from work or school due to gambling? Has gambling ever made your home life unhappy? Did gambling affect your reputation? Have you ever felt remorse after gambling? Did you ever gamble to get money with which to pay debts or otherwise solve financial difficulties?

Those are the first four of 20 important questions posed by Gamblers Anonymous on their website, GamblersAnonymous.org. If you are a gambler, we recommend that you read those 20 questions, even if you are certain that you don’t have a gambling problem. If you’re right, you’ll answer no to all 20 questions and your belief will be confirmed. If you answer yes to any of them, it’s time to look a little further.

Once you recognize that you have a gambling problem, you can start getting help. Gamblers Anonymous uses a support system of others who are struggling with the same problems, along with counselors, to help you with gambling addiction. The Gamblers Anonymous website can help you find a support group near you. If you are not yet ready to meet with others in person, Gamblers Anonymous can still help you. They have a hotline where you can call and speak with a trained counselor. You can also use the Web chat feature to chat with a counselor online.

Gamblers Anonymous can help people with the whole spectrum of problems. Whether you simply occasionally gamble too much or whether you compulsively gamble to the point that you have lost your house and job, they can help. The first step is visiting the website and answering a few questions.

In case you haven’t heard the story that is all over Yahoo News, the Washington, D.C. District Council has repealed online gambling regulation. On Tuesday, the District Council voted by a 10-2 margin to repeal the law, brining regulation in the American capitol to an end.

Last year, the District Council passed the first law in the United States to regulate online gambling. The law would have created a regulatory system where the D.C. Lottery runs online gambling sites and oversees them to ensure safety and adherence to regulations. Players would have initially been able to only gamble at certain online hubs, but eventually it would have been allowed anywhere within the district. The law was passed after it was slipped into a supplemental budget bill by Councilman Michael Brown. The online gambling regulation was never debated by the council.

When news broke that while passing an uncontroversial budget bill, the council had unknowingly voted to regulate online gambling, some were unhappy. There was public outcry from anti-gambling groups. Some questioned Brown’s ethics, saying that he had a conflict of interest, having previously worked for an online gambling company. The council decided to hold public hearings to get some feedback on the issue, and the feedback from the public was decidedly mixed. One councilmember proposed repealing the law and introduced legislation to do that. In all this time, the regulation was never implemented. The government seemed to realize that there was a good chance the law wouldn’t last, so they decide to wait it out. On Tuesday, the council made their decision, with all but two council members (one being Brown) voting to repeal the online gambling law but keep the rest of the budget bill. Online casino sites are still legal in Washington, D.C., but none are regulated or approved by the government.