This article from Salon.com outlines the ten strongest reasons why state lotteries hurt the economy and the poor. It explains how lotteries not only hurt those who play, but also hurt local business and help foster crime.
Form of Government-Sanctioned Gambling
Lottery tickets may soon be purchased with credit cards
A recent rise in online gambling has caused some states to allow consumers to purchase lottery tickets online. However, as this article explains, this allows problem gamblers to rack up huge amounts of debt more quickly and more easily.
Report Investigates How Seniors Are Impacted By Regional Casinos
Amy Ziettlow investigates how the ubiquitous electronic gambling machine absorbs the time and money of many seniors, while exploiting their loneliness, idleness, and boredom.
Regions With Casinos See Increase Sex Trafficking Among Minors
One of the effects of regional casinos is the sex trafficking of minors. This atrocity is garnering more and more attention nationwide as the number of children affected increases.
Increase in sex trafficking of minors getting local, state attention
Casinos do not provide budgetary stability they promise
Casinos fail to increase revenue even though casino leaders continue to promise to the contrary, according to an article in the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. Instead of generating new income to provide for education and other services, experts say casinos provide an unstable and unsuccessful base for revenue and caution against using them to fix budgetary problems.
Money for lottery tickets could be better spent on education
This story in The Chicago Reporter chronicles the funding problems that have plagued the city’s education system. The article proposes that instead of buying lottery tickets, that give only 30 cents per dollar to the school system, Chicago’s children would be better served with contributions directly to the schools.
Better Odds- Money for lottery tickets could be better spent on education
Study Shows Slot Machines Are Built to Deceive
According to this Washington Post story, a new report reveals that slot machines are manufactured to trick players. The machines often use positive reinforcement, in the form of celebratory sounds, to convince gamblers they have won when they are actually losing their money.
Study Shows Far Better Strategies Exist to Create Jobs Than Casinos
As part of their costly public relations campaigns to gain approval for casinos, gambling operators and their supporters commonly promote the narrative that there is little alternative to their proposal to “add” jobs to a region. “If not this casino,” they ask, “what else is there to put local people to work?” While there are no short cuts to building real prosperity in a community, there are much better options than the path of failure offered by casinos. Here is one: Economists James Heintz and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that infrastructure investment spending in general creates about 18,000 total jobs for every $1 billion in new investment spending. This number include jobs directly created by hiring for the specific project, jobs indirectly created by supplier firms, and jobs induced when workers go out and spend their paychecks and boost their local economy. Below is their 2009 report.
Facebook online casinos entice young people to gamble
The UK’s MailOnline reports online gambling giant 888 has struck a lucrative deal with Facebook to offer Las Vegas-style slot machines and other games funded by credit and debit card transactions up to £500 (roughly US $761). Facebook and its gambling partners have been training youth with slot and bingo-style games. The Mail quotes Mark Griffiths, professor of gambling studies at Nottingham Trent University citing research showing that playing free games online is a big factor in developing problem gambling. He warned the new apps will open the floodgates as “gambling companies dive into the social media frenzy to make money. It is thought Facebook will take a 30 percent cut of all bets placed.”
These free games are available to US customers as well. Online game giant Zynga for months has featured intrusive popups and ads pushing their slots and poker games in their ubiquitous “Words with Friends” blockbuster game.
Social network is tempting young to gamble with new betting games
Health Impacts of Gambling Expansion in Toronto
Toronto Board of Health has released a new report that explains, in part, that “problem gambling is a significant public health concern … impacting upwards of 11,000 people aged 18+ in the greater Toronto area.” This disturbing statistic is among many that the Board finds, as the seriousness of problem gambling grows as casinos and online gambling expand.