Mely, An excellent topic, and a very pressing one. Thanks for raising it.

On the one hand, gambling happens in all kinds of ways, from the weekly poker game to the charitable raffle to the bingo hall to the casino. For most people it is a relatively harmless way to spice up a game or to raise a little money.

On the other hand, for many people compulsive gambling is a serious problem, as devastating as any drug addiction. Here in Alberta, before the provincial government started dramatically expanding gambling opportunities (casinos and VLTs) there were 2 Gamblers Anonymous groups in the province. The GA website now lists 52 meetings seven days a week.

The other problem with gambling is that it promotes a materialistic approach to life. Many lottery commercials offer empty promises of happiness following a lottery win. In fact, most people are just as happy before they win the lottery as they are afterwards.

There are a number of issues under the general topic of gambling:

1. are all forms of gambling morally wrong? I don't think so.

2. should governments regulate and restrict some forms of gambling for the common good? Yes, just as they have done for many decades.

3. Should governments promote and profit from lotteries, VLTs and casinos? No, for reasons that John Ralston Saul has articulated better than I can.

4. should churches and other charitable groups promote gambling for fundraising purposes? No. Although I recognize that many feel this is the only way they can meet their budgets, it is a method of fundraising that expands problems for other groups.

5. Should individuals support charties and worthy causes through gambling? Should we work bingos and casinos to reduce costs for play schools, team sports, etc.? My choice has been to decline to participate in gambling and to find other ways to support and financially contribute. The problem is that I know that some of the gambling make those activities affordable for those who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them.

So although I regret the problems created by gambling, I find it hard to be too hard on those who make different choices than I do.

The United Church position, by the way, addresses primarily points 2,3,4

The basic tenet of gambling is, "if you can't afford to lose, don't bet".

While gambling isn't in itself inherently wrong, it is essentially a tax on the uninformed. A group that already likely pays too many taxes.

Gambling isn't "wrong" - it's just stupid, addictive, destructive and wasteful.
Among gamblers it cultivates "˜money is good for its own sake' and "˜something for nothing' mentalities: in the forms of property, currency and commodity speculation, it is the foundation of our society and helps to ensure the poor get poorer and the wealthy get wealthier. It is the saddest, sickest form of idolatory and one of the most potent sources of injustice. It underlies social, political and environmental mayhem. (It is closely related to usury that, in Middle Age Europe, was a crime for which offenders' hands were cut off.)
Things like Lotto and POS scratch cards cards are small beer but a complete con: a disproportionate number of tickets are bought by people who can't really afford them in the face of millions-to-one odds that they will win a life-devastating fortune that they hope will solve all of their problems. It is a game for the innumerate, undereducated, spendthift and foolish. It is a craven form of voluntary taxation and it sucks.
Provincial governments should have nothing to do with it, neither should anyone in their right mins.

I strongly disagree with governments promoting and profiting from gambling.

"Since 1975, OLG lotteries, Casinos, Slots, and Resort Casinos have generated more than $23 billion for the benefit of the Province of Ontario"

I read this to mean that $23 billion was raised through gambling to perform work that, if they did not exist, and were deemed necessary would have been raised by taxes, corporate/private. My sense is that if one did an analysis of the distrubtion of money spent on gambling as compared to income, versus the distribution of tax paid as compared to income, you would see that the gambling graph was shifted to the lower end of the income scale. (I must admit to not having been able to find the data to prove that, so, it is only based on patterning I have seen on who buys lottery tickets)

Further reading:
Chasing lightning: Gambling in Canada. Toronto: United Church Publishing
House.

"The Ontario Trillium Foundation receives an annual allocation of $100 million from the Government of Ontario through the province's charity casino initiative."

I also don't feel that our ability to get funding for making our church space becoming accessable should we require that we accept gambling money (Ontario Trillium funds). I pondered at one time, that we in the united church of canada should figure out some way to sue the government for access to accessable funds, as we are morally excluded from requesting them due to their source being gambling funds. I figured that any case would have been weakened by those who had accepted the funds..sigh..but, it was nice to dream.

wow, so 'poor people' arn't allowed to gamble? maybe we should restrict 'them' from buying butter because that might make them fat, and then 'we' would have to pay for their medical bills.

there are huge problems with gambling yes, but it seems as though we are making huge generalizations...

and i highly doubt the amount of money generated from gambling that ends up going to social services/cultural organizations would be able to be raised through taxing/or the private sector (... and I for one have had enough of companies buying cultural institutions to splash their names all over)

Derek: I beg to differ. The basic tenet of gambling is, "I take all your money and convince you you're having a good time." I worked in the gaming industry, and I considered myself to be providing a service. But the number of people invovled who thought of themselves as business people making a profit at the expense of their clients was sickening to me, and I had to quit.

I don't think gambling is always wrong. But basing our provincial budgets on gambling proceeds is disgusting. Let the money that people put INTO the games, go back to the people who are PLAYING the games (minus a small, regulated amount for the business owner). And fund community programs from a more humane source of public revenue.

Should our governments promote gambling? No. Compulsive gambling is a real problem, and gambling is, at best, frivolous. And there are less harmful forms of entertainment available.

Should our governments profit from gambling? Sure, why not? There are worse places the profits could be going, and I don't think banning gambling entirely is workable or wise.

I agree with a lot of the reasons already named for not supporting gambling especially in churches or as a government fundraiser. I have two slight variants which seem to me important:

1. Gambling is essentially about lying to people -- it is about convincing them that they have a GOOD chance of winning something. The reality is that all gambling is based on most people losing. You are more likely to be hit by lightning than to win most provincial lotteries. But most people simply cannot get their head around small probabilities and unlikely events and the way that gambling is promoted (both small town raffles and the lottery or VLTs) discourages people from making accruate assessments of their likelihood of winning.

2. Gambling encourages us to focus on what we might win rather than what our money is doing -- I don't buy raffle tickets because the organization selling them invites me to think about how beautiful the quilt is or how great the BBq they are raffling off might be (by a similar token the lottery emphasizes the size of the pot) rather than what they intend to do with the money. If they can give me a good description of the good purposes my DONATION will serve then I will usually make one (since buying a ticket is really a donation anyways because the likelihood that I would win anything is so small and it feel both more honest and less materialistic to donate to a good cause rather than buying tickets)

I, too, believe gambling is a terrible scourge. I would like to see legislation that requires their advertising to tell a few truths--for example, they're fond of printing articles in local papers saying things like, "Library receives grant of $xxx from such-and-such lottery" or whatever. IF they were to admit that the amount was only 15% of what the folks in the community had spent on tickets, some people might think twice, instead of buying tickets because 'they support local groups'. If you want to make a donation to the library, give them a dollar--not 15 cents!!
And yes, we need to ask of every dollar spent in a VLT: where did it come from, and where is it going? And insist that people think about how much they spent to win that 'prize.' And remind them, the only people who get rich gambling are the casino owners. Ugh, I'd better quit before I make myself feel really bad. Blessings, all.

I believe that gambling is a social evil. It is an obscene perversion that the government has sought to promote gambling as a way of lowering taxes. The social costs are greater than the benefits. If there are benefits because people from outside the jurisdiction come to gamble these benefits are fleeting because the neighbouring jurisdictions quickly set up their own casinos to lure back their own citizens (and more importantly their dollars)

I have seen more than one family torn apart by gambling. I had a client who gambled away a settlement of about $400,000 for a lifelong disability caused by a terrible car accident that occurred without any fault of his. His family did not find out until the money was gone.

The standard excuse given by those who would defend gambling is that the person who lost the money should have known better and he or she accepted the consequences when he entered the casino. That may or may not be true but my experience is that the hardships caused by problem gambling are visited on the spouses children and parents of the problem gambler. In the case I cited the wife's parents advanced money to the wife to assist her while everyone thinking that it was a short term loan that would later be paid back out of investments not knowing that the husband had already drawn against them and that the bank held a first charge. Later when the husbands surreptitious gambling habit became known and bankruptcy was declared the wife's parents again advanced money to the wife to assist her while she relocated and found work. The money advanced was the wife's father's retirement fund. As a result of all this the parents retirement dreams were shattered. The children saw their mother and father seperate and divorce, after the divorce the father was unable and unwilling to pay support. The family home was lost.

This is not the only story I have seen of this sort. In almost every case the elderly parents are ruined.

In addition to this research shows that the economic advantages brought to communities by casinos are fleeting or entirely illusory as the net effect is that money is removed from the community (sucked out of the community through the casino as if through a portal to another dimension) because contrary to the official story on casinos most of the patrons are locals and the wealth of the community ends up being distributed to out of town and out of country gambling corporations and into government coffers where it is diverted to other uses outside the community.

Don't patronize casinos. Discourage your children and everyone you know from gambling. It is bad for the community, bad for the gambler and most of all bad for his children and immediate family.

qwerty,
This family's story is heartbreaking. It is a disgrace that our governments promote gambling, and as you say, it is self-defeating in every way.

There is also a lot of crime associated with gambling. In Vancouver a woman who used to hang around a casino working as a loan shark disappeared, and later turned up dead. In my town a man tried to drive his propane-powered pick-up into the side of the casino to blow it up--but no damage was done. The man's wife, a gambling addict, had recently commited suicide. I read about this in our local paper, but never heard any more about it--nothing about the man being charged, or having a trial. I wonder if the government didn't charge the man because they didn't want to draw attention to the matter.

I teach statistics classes at our local college, and I often include examples about gambling, in the hopes that the students will understand that the only people getting rich are the people running the casinos and lotteries.