As of last

weekend, video poker machines are illegal in the state of Georgia. All

of them were to be removed or destroyed by midnight Sunday night.

To listen to

those responsible for this decision tell it, a scourge on the state has

been eliminated. They say that video poker machines are addictive and

cause financial ruin and misery to families whose members are sucked into

its destructive web. That's probably true, but the real story is not that

video poker is gone, but that the state-run lottery goes merrily along.

What's the difference?

A story on

the local news last week showed a small group of elderly black men being

led from an abandoned house in southwest Atlanta where they had been gasp!

gambling. The leader of the operation faces a possible felony charge.

If he sold lottery tickets in a convenience store, there would be no problem.

What's the difference?

The difference

should be obvious. The state makes money off the lottery, but it doesn't

get a dime from private gambling operations. Public statements about the

evils of video poker and back-room dice games are the height of hypocrisy.

Many anti-lottery

activists cite statistics showing how poorer people spend more money on

lottery tickets than anyone else and causes poor families to fall even

deeper into financial trouble trying for quick riches. That in itself

is not enough reason to stop lottery operations; the state has no business

telling anyone what they cannot buy just because they might have less

money. The lottery is actually bringing in revenue from a group of people

who pay little or no income taxes, so one could argue that the lottery

is leveling the playing field in that respect.

But if it's

all right to play the lottery, it shouldn't matter if it's with the state

or with your neighbor down the street. If the state does not feel its

own gambling operation is a moral blight on the community, then it should

have no problem with employees participating in a numbers racket at work.

For those of

you who have heard the term in movies but don't actually know what it

is, a numbers racket is almost identical to the lottery. In the early

20th century, organized crime and other organizations would run numbers

operations for anyone who wanted to play. People could actually bet a

single penny on a group of numbers and have a chance of winning. The winning

numbers each day were typically determined by the numbers of winning horses

at a local track.

How does that

differ from the lottery? Not by much. But if you are caught running a

numbers operation, you're likely going to jail. It makes no sense.

But the state

is making too much money off the lottery to allow any competition. They've

got a monopoly on gambling in Georgia, and there's no way that's going

to change.

Revenue projections

now indicate that HOPE scholarships, which the lottery has been funding

for nearly a decade, are about to outstrip lottery funds and the state

may have to dip into the general fund to keep them going. This was predicted

years ago when the lottery was begun, but lottery advocates refused to

pay attention.

Now it looks

like something will have to give in a few years; either a change in the

way scholarships are given, or a tax increase to pay for them. In spite

of this, Gov. Roy Barnes, who opposed the lottery as a state legislator,

has vowed to keep the program going. So much for the lottery being a savior

of education in Georgia.

But video poker

is a "cancer," according to Gov. Barnes. Maybe if he could have

set up some kind of tax schedule for the people who operate those machines,

it would have been all right.

What has caused

more misery to Georgians, video poker or alcohol? There's not enough room

on this page to document the ways that alcohol abuse has destroyed families

across the state, but that must be all right as well, since the state

gets plenty of tax revenue from alcohol sales. And while states feel welcome

to share in the huge bounty of the 'Big Tobacco" lawsuit and recognize

that tobacco is a killer, no one feels obligated to outlaw it (as long

as those taxes on each pack of cigarettes keep coming in).

I'm not a big

fan of organized gambling, but seeing the state give itself a virtual

monopoly on any industry, while having the gall to declare that private

forms of that same industry are dangerous or immoral, is a scary proposition.

What will be next?

[Monroe Roark

can be reached at [email protected].]