Tennessee lottery: It's just not worth it

By Al Bowles

IT WOULD BE so easy for well-meaning people to approach the lottery referendum vote on Nov. 5 believing the lottery is just a harmless form of entertainment. After all, it only takes a dollar or two to play. What could be the harm in that? Besides, if it helps fund education or solve the budget crisis, all the better. I don't have to be concerned or cast my vote.

Whoa! Wait. Think again. I believe that as you learn the truths about the lottery, you'll not only discover the promises are more smoke than substance.

There are also significant costs to children and families of Tennessee. Equally critical, there's a real threat to state integrity. Consider these documented truths from the Gambling Free Tennessee Alliance Committee to Save Our Children:

• The proposed lottery will not solve Tennessee's tax problems. No income from the proposed lottery will be used for a state budget, teachers' salaries, curriculum, books, etc. Instead, income will be used for scholarships. What's left over goes to capital expenditures for K-12 (none for new college needs). If any other money is left over, it will be spent for before- and after-school programs for pre-schoolers.
  
  
• University of Illinois professor John Kindt estimates that for every dollar a state receives in gambling revenues, it costs the state nearly $3 to fund escalating criminal justice and social welfare programs.
  
  
• There is no getting around the fact that lotteries prey on the poor. Adding insult to injury, the lottery acts as a reverse Robin Hood, disproportionately taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
  
  
• From the lottery's legions of losers, lost money is usually only the beginning. In 1999, a blue-ribbon federal commission found strong connections between gambling addiction and crime, homelessness, child and spouse abuse, bankruptcy and divorce.
  
  
• Lotteries undermine educational principles. The Hawaii State Teachers Association in 1997 said that "a lottery would undermine the values teachers try to instill in students" They said that "a lottery would devalue the principle that achievement comes through hard work."
  
  
• Lottery gambling is lousy economics. Two Duke University researchers call state lotteries "the most regressive tax we know of."
  
  
• The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church 2000 states that the Church should promote standards that would "make unnecessary and undesirable the resort to commercial gambling – including public lotteries – as a recreation, as an escape, or as a means of producing public revenue or funds for support of charities and government." (paragraph 163.G.)
  

The list could go on and on. I invite you to gather more truths from the resource-providers listed at the end of this article. The lottery is anything but harmless, and before our people cast their vote on Nov. 5, we need to help them to hear the truth. This truth is intended to be instructive and persuasive in the prophetic spirit, challenging our people to a prayerful and thoughtful vote. Please join with others in praying and helping to make the facts known.

Personally, I don't believe we need lottery gambling in Tennessee. It is just not worth it from an economic, social, spiritual, moral, ethical, "love your neighbor as you love yourself" or any other standpoint. There are more positive and healthy ways to meet our needs.

The Rev. Bowles is Chattanooga District superintendent. For more information, contact Gambling Free Tennessee Alliance at (615) 460-1183 or www.gfta.org; Rev. Mike Feely at (423) 698-6951 or revfeely@yahoo.com; or Anne Travis at (865) 690-4080 or AnneTravis@holston.org.


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