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State Lotteries: Hypocritical, Cruel and Unjust
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19619 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
1,938 Words |
| Author
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Sandeep Mangalmurti and Robert Allan Cooke
Sandeep Mangalmurti, a policy analyst for the Heartland
Institute, is a philosophy student at the University of
Chicago. Robert Allan Cooke, a policy adviser to the Heartland
Institute, is director of the Institute for Business Ethics
and associate professor of philosophy at De Paul University.
This article is based on their report "State Lotteries:
Seducing the Less Fortunate?" released in April 1991 as
Heartland Policy Study No. 34. |
Would you support an enterprise that ruins the lives of society's most vulnerable citizens, the poor and minorities? Would you allow such an enterprise to ridicule hard work and give false hope through manipulative television, radio, newspaper, and billboard advertising? Would you have doubts about an enterprise that some way encourages individuals to travel a destructive path, one they never would have taken if this enterprise had not exerted its influence?
Would you feel any better about this enterprise if you learned it was an agency of government?
The enterprise in question is the state lottery, and behind its cheerful advertising and celebratory prize ceremonies there is a dark side fraught with controversy. We uncovered this side during a year's research into the costs, benefits, and philosophical ramifications of state lotteries. Here are some of our findings.
State Lotteries Are Hypocritical
State governments have reached new disturbing heights of hypocrisy by aggressively promoting gambling with one hand while suppressing private gambling with the other. If the rationale for outlawing private gambling is that gambling is immoral or a public nuisance, how can the state justify its direct involvement in a gambling enterprise? To criminalize one and sponsor the other is a clear attempt to place government and government officials above their own laws and moral judgment.
When governments act hypocritically, injustice is the inevitable result. Individuals who gamble among themselves are fined and imprisoned, while those who gamble with their state government are not. This represents a major departure from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights--both of which sought to establish the fundamental principle that all persons should be treated equally under the law.
A writer for the Eldorado (Ill.) Daily Journal, in an editorial endorsement of our findings, commented on the hypocrisy this way:
Explain this to your children: it's illegal for the people of Illinois to gamble in their homes or at a place of business, but it's legal to gamble if you play the state's lottery games. That comes close to fitting the adage: "Do as I say, not as I do." ... The glaring inconsistencies of our state gambling laws contribute nothing to our
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