For years now, the government has claimed to be serious about cracking down on illegal gambling, especially jueteng. The main strategy has been to use the Small Town Lottery, or STL, as a legal alternative.

The idea was simple enough. If you create a regulated lottery system through the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, you give people a lawful outlet, generate funds for health and welfare programs and undercut the illegal operators who have long treated entire provinces as private gambling fiefdoms.

On paper, it sounded sensible.

The STL was first introduced in 1987, revived in 2006, and later tightened through new implementing rules issued by the PCSO in 2020. The updated rules were supposed to strengthen its regulation, make operators more accountable, and ensure that STL would genuinely suppress illegal gambling while creating jobs and raising money for public services.

But as so often happens in this country, the law may have been changed, but the operators simply changed their tactics. In provinces like Pangasinan, illegal gambling lords apparently found a neat little workaround. They no longer needed to openly compete with the STL. Instead, they simply mimicked it. They set up what could only be described as a shadow gambling system. They took illegal bets on the side, followed the STL draw schedule and then copied the winning numbers once the results of the legal draw came out.

Think for a moment how brazen that is.

The state puts up a regulated system precisely to kill illegal gambling, and the illegal operators respond by parasitically attaching themselves to that very system, using its draws to give their illegal bets a patina of legitimacy. And in the process, the whole point of the STL gets gutted.

Because if illegal operators can freely piggyback on the legal system, then the STL stops being a weapon against jueteng and starts becoming a convenient cover for it. The state assumes the burden of running the lawful system, while the shadow networks reap the profits without licenses, oversight, taxes, or accountability.

Meanwhile, the public loses twice. First, through the continued spread of illegal gambling. Second, through the loss of revenue that should have gone to health and welfare programs.

And this is why enforcement matters.

Under Republic Act No. 9287, illegal gambling is not some harmless side hustle. Operators and financiers face heavy penalties, including imprisonment of 12 to 16 years. Public officials who participate in or protect these operations face even stiffer punishment, ranging from 12 to 20 years, plus a fine of up to P5 million, PLUS perpetual disqualification from public office.

That last part is crucial. Because shadow gambling networks do not thrive by magic. They survive because somebody looks the other way. A police officer, a barangay official, a mayor, even a governor. Some local power broker who decides that the cash is worth more than the law. Illegal gambling has always been more than a vice problem. It is also a corruption problem, and eventually an electoral problem, because illegal gambling money has a nasty habit of being recycled into political influence.

So if the government policy on illegal gambling is to mean anything at all, it cannot stop at issuing rules and making statements. It has to go after the shadow operators with all speed and seriousness. More importantly, it has to go after the public officials who allow these illegal networks to thrive through their silence, connivance, or outright protection.

Government has to send a clear message to the illegal gambling operators and their coddlers: We are done playing games.