State Lotteries Among Most Abusive Form of Gambling, Study Says

A study shows that lottery gambling is disproportionately supported by poor and minorities, but foes of casino gambling are relatively silent.

A survey in South Carolina shows that minorities and the poor are the most likely to participate in state lotteries. Many states and religious organizations blithely support lotteries, which are returning them revenue, while damning other forms of gambling less harmful to the economically disadvantaged.

South Carolina's statistics, kept at first by law but recently continued voluntarily by the lottery operators, shows that, while lottery players comprise the same percentages racially and economically as the general population, the numbers become skewed when adjusted for frequency of play.

Blacks make up less than 20 percent of the state's population, but 38.4 percent of frequent lottery players, who participate more than once a week. People in households earning less than $40,000 a year make up 28 percent of the state, while accounting for 53.4 percent of frequent players.

Some lottery spokesmen suggested a cultural link among the frequent lottery players existed to the old numbers racket.

What remained unexplained was how state lotteries, with their odds far from true and their chances of winning among the worst this side of three-card monte, are given such a free pass by anti-gambling groups while far safer games are demonized. Surely the revenues that churches and states receive from lotteries has nothing to do with the silence of the moral police.