In Asia, only Macau currently has a major gaming industry, though several other countries have limited facilities, often closed to their own nationals. But in the past year, Taiwan has revived consideration of a long-standing plan to allow casino resorts on an outlying island.

The government of the Indian state of Haryana is moving to allow a casino, which would become the country's first onshore gaming establishment. (A shipboard casino has operated out of Goa since 2001).

Singapore's puritanical rulers turned down calls from the tourism sector for legalization, but the issue is making its way on to Japan's political agenda.

"The Asian market is very attractive for the larger casino companies because of the high propensity to gamble among Asian populations, and the present undersupply of casinos in the region," notes William Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Gambling is hugely popular at every level of Thai society, even though legal organized gambling is strictly limited to the national lottery and two race tracks in the capital.

In Bangkok alone, almost one-third of the population play the more flexible underground lottery, according to a recent survey by the Thai Farmers Research Center. It estimated that the capital's residents gamble about 8 billion baht (US$186 million) a month.

Other Thai gamblers take their stakes abroad. Once solely the privilege of jet-setters, in recent years it has come to involve nothing more than a five-minute walk across the border to any of the dozens of casinos set up in neighboring Cambodia and Myanmar.

Advocates of legalization say it will redirect some of the vast amounts of money now flowing into the black economy — or abroad — into government coffers and legitimate local business instead.

Experts agree.

"It's better to have a well regulated and appropriately taxed legal industry than an illegal one and it's better that domestic gamblers should stay at home to lose their money rather than going abroad,"' says Professor Peter Collins, director of the Center for the Study of Gambling at Salford University in Manchester, England.

Legalized gambling will take business away from illegal operations, its supporters claim, curbing opportunities for corruption such as widespread protection payoffs to police.

Opponents of legalization worry about social costs, such as addiction and bankruptcy, especially among lower-income people. The Thai Farmers Research Center found that gambling expenditures accounted for 10 to 18 percent of gamblers' income, and one in four people surveyed had gambling debts.

There's also a question of whether sufficient oversight can be exercised to keep out undesirable people and activities, such as money laundering.

"Legalizing casinos might foster underground organizations aimed at extorting money from gamblers," said the Thai Farmer's Research Center, affiliated with the Thai Farmers Bank. "The more income generated by casinos, the more these organizations would expand until they would be beyond control.

"Moreover, casinos could well become a cover for other illegal businesses, especially prostitution... All in all, the gambling industry would became the catalyst for a full-blown illegal industry."

As if to justify those fears, Thailand's first legal casino is likely to be opened in Pattaya, a resort notable for its roaring sex trade and serving as a home away from home for gangsters from South Asia, Russia and further afield.

According to Pattaya's main political power broker, Somchai Khunpleum — a man once dubbed the area's "Godfather" by the Thai press — the plan to put a casino in Pattaya is already a done deal.

Somchai, better known as Kamnan Poh, has staked his reputation on bringing a casino to the area 110 kilometers (70 miles) southeast of Bangkok, and has even begun negotiating to have one of Bangkok's two race courses relocated there.

He has said the casino will initially be hosted in a leased portion of the resort's giant Ambassador City Jomtien hotel, and that so far, prospective investors from Las Vegas, Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong, as well as Thailand, have expressed interest. After a trial period, a full-service casino resort would be established near town.

Tourism Minister Sonthaya Khunpleum, who happens to be Kamnan Poh's son, is also encouraging the idea.

Proposals to legalize casinos have been on the Thai political agenda for decades, only to wither on the vine, primarily because of gambling's association with the unsavory elements of Thai society.

But the prime minister, who took office two years ago, seems determined to push the idea as far as it will go. He benefits from holding a solid majority in Parliament.

In October, he met with J. Terrence Lanni, chairman of the major U.S casino group MGM Mirage.

MGM Mirage spokesman Alan M. Feldman told The Associated Press said that the company believes "that Thailand has the potential to become a dynamic center for gaming entertainment."

"The legalization of gaming would ... provide Thailand with a unique opportunity to stimulate investment and growth," he said.

Participation by an established major gaming company or foreign government enterprise could determine the success of a Thai enterprise, since regulation and the will to impose it are linked.

"Who the investors are is critical to the integrity (or lack of it) in the established casino," says Nevada's Eadington.

According to Fred Gushin of Spectrum Gaming Group, a New Jersey-based international gaming consultancy, companies such as MGM Mirage "will bring with them aggressive internal compliance programs."

This is not because of any innate honesty on the part of such companies, but because if any of their operations worldwide are tainted, their lucrative U.S. gambling licenses could be pulled by the strict regulators there.

Local owners and operators, by contrast, could be more susceptible to political and criminal pressures.

"Thailand has tremendous opportunities for the worldwide gaming industry, and it will initially be up to government policy to create an environment in which international investment can take place," says Gushin.