However, during a parliament session on 18 April 2005, Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, announced the cabinet's decision to develop two casinos and associated hotels and malls in Marina South and Sentosa.
[2] Prior to the development of the integrated resorts, locals would primarily gamble on cruise ships that sailed in the international waters just beyond Singapore's control.
Even closer to home, Malaysia has long had a legal casino accompanied theme park on Genting Highlands, which proved popular with Singaporean tourists.
In addition to the casinos, the IRs will have other amenities including hotels, restaurants, shopping and convention centers, theatres, museums and theme parks.
[8] Activist groups argued that a casino could also lead to undesirable activities often associated with gambling, including money laundering, loan sharks or even organized crime.
[citation needed] The six-month consultative period gave the opportunity for many sections of the population to voice their opposition to the casinos, including a petition hat attracted tens of thousands of signatures.
[14] While football clubs and other registered societies that wanted to run slot machine operations were required to apply for a private lottery permit from police, a condition of the permit only required that entry and use of the slot machine rooms be restricted to members only, but a check by The Straits Times revealed that memberships could be purchased for as low as $5 in comparison to the $100 entrance fee of casinos at the time.
[14] As Members of Parliament and gambling counsellors warned that these venues provided an easy and accessible outlet for gambling and after having been called a "back door" for addicts banned from the casinos by Pastor Billy Lee,[16] a founder of Blessed Grace Social Services,[14] a call for an urgent review of the regulations governing these private slot machine clubs was made by MP Seah Kian Peng, the Government Parliamentary Committees chair for Social and Family Development.
On 20 July 2017, The Ministry of Home Affairs announced that regulations on slot machines would be tightened over the next two years and included changes that added more stringent criteria to meet for permits, requirements aimed at reducing availability and accessibility, and setting in place social safeguards to mitigate potential problem gambling.