I don’t have any problem with gambling. We just spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s in Vegas and, while I’m not much of a gambler and only lost 3 dollars, I enjoyed my time there.
I do feel a little ill when I see ads for state lotteries. There are arguments that without lotteries, people will gamble illegally, but that doesn’t seem to be borne out by advertising the lottery. It seems to me that if people want to gamble, they’ll find the lotteries without those ads. The ads feel predatory.
I don’t think that the advertisements here for the various lotteries, Lotto, Powerball games are especially predatory. Of course I don’t know how they compare with what goes on where you are.
I was just thinking about this last night. The Massachusetts lottery has just come out with a really funny add. It is about a “High 5” device you can buy and strap to your back after you win the lottery. So many people will want to give to a high 5, it gets tiring quickly. They show these lottery winners with a fake hand strapped to a pole on a spring on their back. When people try to give them a high 5, they just trigger the spring and the fake hand does it for them.
Pretty clever and it makes me sick. You shouldn’t be using mind control devices on habitual lottery players.
It irritates the hell out of me. The ones floating around here are “It can Happen!”. Referring to the fact that you have a one-in-a-gazillion chance of winning the Powerball. If they advertise, I want to see Truth in Advertising.
The casinos up here do the same thing. “Our Grand Casino Story” ads run about how normal people win these awesome prizes and jackpots. For once I’d like to see “Our Grand Casino Story” featuring a person gambling away their savings.
Truth in advertising would be nice. But don’t hold your breath. The people who benefit most from these things are the operations companies, and they manipulate your representatives with lies. It’s that simple. Nothing they say is straight. No calculation is correctly stated. If they have billboards that broadcast “Now up to 15 Million”, the real cash payout will be half of that, and I’m not talking about taxes. If they tell the state that 3% will go to schools, they skim and skim and have expenses until it’s half of that.
The odds are spelled out in great detail on the back of the blank you fill out to pick your own numbers. Every scratch-off ticket has an odds statement on the back. How much more truth can you ask for?
I don’t see any reason not to encourage people to pay my state’s only voluntary tax. I see ads every day for our horse track and the riverboat casinos three hours from here. Why shouldn’t the lotto have the same right?