Alabama Group Predicts a Dry Well for Lottery Proponents
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
January 26, 2004
(AgapePress) - A pro-family activist in Alabama says the lottery is "dead on arrival" when pro-gambling forces try and bring it up in the current session of the state legislature.Five years ago, Alabama voters soundly rejected (54% to 46%) a constitutional amendment that would have permitted a state lottery. Once again, gambling advocates are trying to put an amendment before voters that would repeal a prohibition on a lottery. They are pinning their hopes on a claim that a state lottery would generate as much as $150-$200 million each year for education.
John Giles, president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, says according to a questionnaire distributed to state-level candidates in both the legislative and executive branches, a majority of state lawmakers have said they will vote against any efforts to legalize gambling in the Yellowhammer State.
"In that questionnaire we asked: 'Would you support a statewide lottery?' and other gambling-related questions," Giles explains. "And of course, the results of that questionnaire indicate that over 50% of the House and 50% of the Senate in the Alabama legislature will oppose a lottery. So we're depending on these legislators to honor their word and their commitment on paper."
Giles says studies in other states have shown that legalized gambling leads to increased drug trafficking, white-collar crime, and prostitution. And there are other good reasons not to have a state lottery, he adds.
"Repealing the lottery prohibition out of the Alabama constitution will open up games of chance -- which means full-scale casinos," the Alabama activist explains. "It preys on the poor. It will cause a reduction in our Education Trust Fund by $35 million. And you add that to the pathological gambler costs of taxpayer dollars of about $200 million annually, [you're looking at] a $70 million loss at the passage and the implementation of the lottery in Alabama."
In a report titled The Alabama Lottery: Theft by Consent, the Alabama Policy Institute reports that the presence of a lottery is a strong predictor of whether a state legalizes casinos. The Institute quotes research conducted by a professor at St. Mary's College who found that more than 80% of states that that have both a lottery and casinos legalized a lottery first -- and in those states that legalized a lottery first, legalization of casinos took an average of less than eight years.
The Institute also reports that in order to generate $200 million for education, an Alabama Education Lottery would have to sell about $645 million worth of tickets annually -- or about $144 worth of tickets bought by each resident of the state. A study produced by a professor of economics at Columbus State University suggests the state is too poor and does not have a population large enough to sustain a lottery that nets more than $72 million a year.
