onvenience
store walls lined with colorful scratch tickets. Players staring
for hours at Keno screens. Wagering at horse and dog racing tracks.
The nightly Lottery drawings.
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version.
Even though craps, black jack and slot machines
are still illegal in the state, it’s fair to say Massachusetts
residents like to gamble.
The Massachusetts Lottery is considered the largest
per-capita lottery in the country. Last year, it generated $3.9
billion, about a quarter of which is funneled to cities and towns.
The 2002 Profile of the American Gambler, conducted
by Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., found that 27 percent of Massachusetts
adults visited a casino at least once last year. The average Massachusetts
gambler made four trips a year, almost all to one of the two American
Indian casinos in neighboring Connecticut.
Massachusetts residents’ affinity for wagering
is both a driving factor for - and argument against - allowing
casinos in the state.
“We’re a gambling society. It would be a little
hypocritical for us to say that this is some kind of novel idea,”
said state Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford.
As a new casino debate emerges in Massachusetts,
some of the most serious reservations center around the effects
they would have on the Lottery, which is a critical source of
revenue for cities and towns.
If slot machines and black jack tables cut into
the Lottery profits, any tax benefits realized from casinos could
be nullified, some officials worry.
The concerns are backed up by evidence in some
states but refuted by others. Connecticut, for example, is home
to two of the world’s largest casinos, yet that state’s lottery
- while substantially smaller than the Massachusetts Lottery -
continues to grow annually.
“I really don’t think that casinos have any impact
on lottery games. They’re two different types of gambling,” said
David Schwarz, director of the gaming research center at the University
of Nevada at Las Vegas.
On the flip side, a growing number of state officials
are eager to keep Massachusetts gamblers - more importantly their
money - closer to home. Studies have indicated that as much as
40 percent of the business at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut
comes from Massachusetts residents.
Gambling proponents in this state estimate that’s
at least $240 million in revenue, and with the state in a steep
economic decline, those numbers are becoming increasingly hard
to digest for some state officials.
onvenience
store walls lined with colorful scratch tickets. Players staring
for hours at Keno screens. Wagering at horse and dog racing tracks.
The nightly Lottery drawings.
