Stop Predatory Gambling

States Looking to Open Lottery Retailer in Your Home

by Catherine

An article in this Sunday’s New York Times highlights the growing pressure from legislators and predatory gambling interests to legalize Internet gambling: from online lottery subscriptions to poker and other games of chance.

These interests play upon the traditional image of poker to downplay the more serious problems involved with online gambling. After all, most people still associate poker with a group of friends playing a Friday night game of cards at the kitchen table. Online poker is, in many respects, the opposite of this. It removes the social aspect of traditional poker (for example, being surrounded by a group of people who presumably are not out to bankrupt you) and creates an isolated atmosphere in front of your computer, with a credit card in hand. Can there ever really be effective regulation that prevents you from racking up enormous amounts of debt in a short period of time? Legalizing online gambling is truly “the equivalent of opening a lottery retailer in every home, office and dorm room in America.”

Some states, like Illinois, have already passed laws that put lotteries online. Illinois State Senate President John Cullerton notes, “We’ll be selling to new players, not the same old players […] That means more roads and bridges.” Clearly, this is about targeting younger people. Today, people in their twenties and thirties are less likely to have an established routine, unlike their parents, of visiting the 7-Eleven down the street to pick up scratch tickets. State lotteries know this and they are turning toward the Internet and using social media sites, such as Facebook, so that they may continue selling false dreams of prosperity to the next generation.