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Quoted Text

VIEWPOINT
State lottery ads trap residents in harmful, addictive activity
BY PETER HUSTON For The Sunday Gazette

    New York state has many obligations, each requiring money. With more income the state could help citizens and provide more opportunity.
    Finding new ways for New York to earn money is desirable. How? Perhaps vice. There are a lot of arguments in favor of legalized staterun vice, such as prostitution, drugs and gambling. Let’s visualize these in order.
    Imagine a string of governmentrun brothels with branches at Thruway truck stops, perhaps staffed by convicts who have volunteered to reduce their sentences, each making New York’s children money for school books. Picture the ads. “New York Girls — Best in the world! Try them today. And it helps kids.”
    Or New York state could dispense addictive drugs with sales enhanced by clever marketing, and, again, use the profits for education. Imagine it. “New York Brand Cocaine Products! The highest high from the Empire State Building to Mount Marcy, and a rush more intense than Niagara Falls or Mount Van Hoevenberg Bobsled Run! And the money builds school playgrounds!”
    And imagine if we used gambling to aid schools . . .
WAIT A MINUTE
    Whoops! Actually, we don’t need to. New York is already in the gambling business, isn’t it? And they do advertise heavily, don’t they? And, somehow, it’s excusable because the money goes to schools.
    It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?
    Although there are many real arguments for legalized, regulated, monitored drugs, prostitution and gambling, is it truly appropriate for our state government to fi rst, have a monopoly on a segment of vice, i.e. lottery tickets, and then, through heavy advertising, encourage citizens to partake of this vice, while knowing full well that such participation is statistically highly harmful to its citizens?
    Gov. Spitzer is currently discussing what to do with the lottery and its $2.1 billion in revenues (If you’re wondering, that means that New York state has now, on the average made $108 profit per state resident from its lottery. That’s ignoring the amount reimbursed as prizes or spent on operating expenses or advertising.)
    The lottery has a revenue of $6.7 billion a year. Assuming 19.3 million New Yorkers (a 2006 figure), that’s $347 per state resident each year. That’s more than $6 per New Yorker per week. That’s a lot of losing tickets. (Although out-of-state residents buy New York tickets, I’m assuming New Yorkers buy out-of-state tickets and the per resident expense averages out.)
WRONG MESSAGE
    And if the lottery is such a success, well, why not branch out into drugs and prostitution? If it’s a problem, why is New York state advertising the lottery so intensely? Of course, the money goes to education, but what message is this REALLY sending to children, both as they directly receive the money and, indirectly, as they view the advertising on TV and elsewhere?
    It is generally recognized that some behaviors, particularly intense, highly stimulating activities, are addictive and some people are more easily addicted than others. Gambling is such an activity and, statistically, it harms the overwhelming member of participants, with the amount of harm varying depending on participation. (I, for instance, do not buy any lottery tickets. Therefore, one of my neighbors is buying my $6 per week of tickets for me, making their total $12 per week or almost $700 per year.)
    To put a human face on it, I once offered a ride to a diner to an acquaintance and his mother who I’d never met. This acquaintance was in treatment for crack addiction. (Sadly, last I heard he had relapsed.) Addiction tends to run in families, but manifests itself in different ways. Therefore I was amazed when his mother told me she had once been offered a job at the lottery but had refused the offer, because she would have had to stop buying lottery tickets had she become a lottery employee. Clearly, the chance to buy tickets was of greater importance to her than the chance to take a better job.
    And in a state with millions of people, she cannot be alone.
HERE TO STAY
    For better or worse, however, the lottery is probably here to stay. But does it really need to advertise? Do we, as citizens, benefit from an endless barrage of radio and television spots designed to breed dissatisfaction with one’s lot and encouraging poor spending habits and unrealistic expectations? (And, why, must I ask, has the lottery run Jamaican-themed ads bemoaning New York’s winter weather and encouraging Caribbean beach vacations? Shouldn’t they at least encourage winners to vacation in our state, perhaps by skiing?)
    I think the lottery, and lottery advertising especially, is bad. But perhaps I’m wrong. If so, our state should expand with a highly advertised monopoly on drugs and prostitution, too. Our schools could use the money. http://www.dailygazette.net/Repository/getimage.dll?path=SCH/2008/01/27/47/Img/Pc0470500.jpg

The Roman empire used to do things like this......they also had something like Nascar only they were called chariots.....WWE=gladiators.....and they liked gambling......