Gambling has returned for consideration to the Golden Dome for the seventh straight year. And the state’s degenerate gamblers and betting conglomerates are Jonesing for a fix.
Each year, the arguments are the same: Most people are in favor of legal gambling — or at least have no beef against it. And it’s free money for the state.
But every year the gambling forces crap out. Why? Some legislators oppose it on religious grounds. Some worry — rightly so — about gambling addiction. And there’s always a divide as to how to divvy up the anticipated revenue windfall.
This year, state Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, wants to change the Georgia Constitution and remove a prohibition against gambling. Both the House and Senate must pass it by two-thirds margins and then voters would have to approve it in a referendum.
Previous efforts had gambling proceeds going to things like education. But Summers wants to evenly split revenue across the board. If the state’s cut is $1 billion, then each of Georgia’s 159 counties would receive $6.3 million, whether it’s Fulton County with more than 1 million residents or Taliaferro with 1,609.
Some, including me, might consider that to be a hairbrained plan.
But Summers, who represents nine smallish counties in South Georgia, is rolling the dice, betting that rural legislators step up behind him. It’s a fair plan, he contends, because if gambling is OK’d then metro Atlanta would get casinos. And, he added, “the small counties that are dying,” would conceivably get zip.
“Fulton County, what’s $6 million to them? But to Taliaferro, that’s real money.”
He ticked off the talking points: The state would get revenue, problem bettors would get help and setting it all up “costs the state of Georgia not one dime.”
Free is always a selling point.
But nothing is ever really free. Do you know how the state would be lavished with new revenue, while gambling companies rake in profits?
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Losers. That’s what most people become when they gamble.
And now with AI, social media, algorithms and smartphones, you can lose your hard-earned money faster than ever. It’s downright predatory, especially in sports betting, which 39 states have now legalized.
Harry Levant, a gambling addiction counselor, told me legalization of sports betting, which came after a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision, is not the true problem.
“It’s what the gambling companies have done in creating fundamentally different, defectively designed and dangerous gambling products,” he said, echoing a statement he gave to Congress last month in an effort to have the feds tighten up gambling laws.
The problem today is almost everyone has an instantaneous gambling machine in their pocket. It’s called their phone.
Guys like Tony Soprano have been edged out in favor of gambling giants like DraftKings and FanDuel, which control perhaps 70% of the sports betting market.
Young men, especially, are prime targets for such sports betting apps, which know how they have bet and pushes them to keep going, that a winning streak’s just around the corner.
Young men are intensely interested in sports, plugged in to technology and largely risk adverse.
The saying, “Hold my beer?” No doubt, invented by a young guy.
Now they can utter that while tapping bets into their phone.
The apps push “microbetting” which allows wagering not just on game outcomes but on every pitch, every down, every basket.
“It’s designed to get them to bet faster and in far larger amounts,” said Levant, a former Philadelphia lawyer who went to prison due to fraud caused by his gambling addiction.
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
Arguments for gambling always circulate around creating jobs and revenue. The book “Losing Big” says 1 out of 5 American adults bet on sports in 2023, totaling $121 billion.
But every dollar spent gambling is not spent on movies, dinners or babies’ shoes. It’s money misdirected.
Interestingly, Atlanta’s pro sports teams support legalization. TV viewership has been down for baseball, basketball and even the NFL. Having fans gambling on random games — perhaps the LA Clippers versus the Miami Heat on a Tuesday — is a way to gin up interest.
“Sports organizations are trying to hedge their bets,” said Jim Strode, a business professor at Ohio University who studies sports gambling.
“There’s no doubt that if your state is not one of (the states with sports betting) then the teams there are at a competitive disadvantage,” he said. “They’re missing out on sponsorship dollars and advertising.”
Two years ago, Ohio allowed sports betting and he sees students taking to it. “The majority of people putting down money are going on instinct,” Strode said.
Instinct is usually not a winning strategy.
Charles Fain Lehman, who toils at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, studies drug policy. “There’s an obvious overlap” with gambling, he said.
In an article entitled “The Sports Gambling Disaster,” he wrote that gambling addictions, bank overdrafts and bankruptcies are all up in states with legal sports betting.
He told me every drug crisis has a similar pattern: There’s a new drug. It seems like fun. Seemingly there are no addictions. Then there are, and people not addicted drop off using it. Then it is roundly viewed as a problem. Then it diminishes.
“With gambling, we’re still on the upswing,” Lehman said.
I’ll bet on a reckoning to come.
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