Lottery Fever​—The World’s Gamble

“ALL you need is a dollar and a dream.” The dream was to win the New York lottery jackpot of 45 million dollars. A dollar bought a shot at winning. The dreamers came by the millions. Standing in line to buy their tickets, they chatted about yachts and mink coats and mansions​—things they would buy if they won the prize money. At one point, throughout the state, they snapped up tickets at the rate of 28,000 per minute. In the final three days before the drawing, they bought 37.4 million tickets.

In Japan business is always brisk at the 10,000 authorized lottery booths where people flock to buy tickets for the Year-End Jumbo Takarakuji (Lottery). At one Tokyo booth where five first-prize tickets had reportedly been sold in previous years, about 300 people were already standing in line when the booth opened for business. One young woman, who believed that luck favors the early bird, had been waiting since 1:00 a.m. The coveted jackpot last year: a record 100 million yen ($714,285, U.S.).

In a West African capital, what the locals call the Lotto College area is always crowded with people who have come to buy tickets and to speculate on future numbers. Long lists of past winning numbers are sold to those who hope to find in them some clue to future combinations. For those with faith in mystic knowledge, lotto prophets are on hand to prophesy, for a fee, numbers to bet on.

Isolated occurrences? By no means. Lottery fever is pandemic. It inflames every continent. It burns in rich countries and poor. It excites young and old at every economic, social, and educational level of society.

Yes, lotteries are big business, and business is booming. In the United States alone, State lotteries took in $18.5 thousand million in 1989. Only 27 years ago, that figure was zero. But now lotteries are the second-largest form of gambling in the United States, and the industry is growing by 17.5 percent every year, as fast as the computer industry.

Worldwide lottery sales in 1988, according to the latest figures available from the magazine Gaming and Wagering Business, totaled $56.38 thousand million, an enormous figure. That amounts to more than ten dollars for every man, woman, and child on earth! And that’s in just one year!

While no one can deny that lotteries are prospering, many argue strongly against them. The next two articles examine the growing popularity of lotteries and the controversy behind them. As you consider the facts, you will be able to decide whether lotteries are for you. Is it smart to play? How easy is it to win? Can you lose more than money?

Lotteries​—Why So Popular?

WHY do people play the lottery? “It’s entertaining, it’s fun,” said a lottery-board spokeswoman. Maybe so, but the main appeal surely is the prize money. Just about everybody could use a little extra money. And lotteries promise a lot of money. In today’s uncertain world of escalating prices, stock-market crashes, and dead-end jobs, millions of people believe that winning the lottery is the only imaginable way for them to become fabulously rich.

Adding to the appeal, lotteries are uncomplicated and easy to play. There are many variations, such as Lotto, numbers, and games where you scratch the paper to reveal hidden numbers, but all of these share two features. The first is that players win when the numbers on their ticket match those drawn by the organizers. Second, unlike other forms of gambling, no special skill or knowledge is required to win. Winning or losing is a matter of sheer chance.

People also play lotteries because it’s easy to buy tickets. Most Americans can buy them at the local grocery store. Elsewhere, if a lottery booth is not nearby, players can place bets by mail, telephone, telex, or fax.

What’s New About Lotteries?

Are lotteries new? Not at all. At festivities in ancient Rome, emperors Nero and Augustus gave away slaves and property as prizes. One of the first recorded cash prizes was probably paid in 1530 by a lottery in Florence, Italy. In the centuries that followed, lotteries flourished in Europe. Lotteries thrived in early America too, bringing in money that helped finance Jamestown, the Continental Army, and the building of prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia.

In the 19th century, however, the business ran into trouble. Opposers railed against mass gambling and charged that drawings were rigged. Lotteries were riddled with bribery, corruption, and criminal involvement. Private promoters raked in enormous profits. As a result, lotteries in the United States, France, and Britain were banned.

End of story? Obviously not. Lotteries had continued to thrive elsewhere​—Italy, for example, and Australia. Spain’s Carlos III created a lottery in 1763; its modern version was established by law in 1812. Country after country leaped aboard the lottery bandwagon. In 1933, France lifted its ban and established the Loterie nationale. Also in the 1930’s, Ireland set up its famous Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake. Japan’s Takarakuji got started in 1945. Britain OK’d football pools and premium bond drawings, lotteries in fact if not in name. And in 1964 the United States got back into the business.

Then in the 1970’s, two developments transformed the lottery operation. The first was the introduction of computers linked to retail terminals. Now it was possible to organize high-volume, high-frequency games in which players could choose their own numbers. No longer was it necessary to wait weeks or months to see if they’d won; players could find out in days, hours, or even minutes.

The second development was the introduction of Lotto, a game where the odds against winning are high. In Lotto, when the jackpot isn’t won, it is carried over into succeeding games. Consequently, the prize money can build to millions of dollars. With Lotto, sales soared, and business became big, really big.

Appeal to Promoters

Why do governments promote gambling? Because it’s an easy way to bring in money without raising taxes. Whereas slot machines and roulette give back in prize money as much as 95 percent of what they take in, lotteries pay back less than 50 percent. For example, in the United States in 1988, about 48 cents of every lottery dollar was paid back in prizes and 15 cents went for promotion, sales, and administration. The remaining 37 cents was used to fund public improvements, education, health care, and aid to the elderly. Nationwide, that amounted to $7.2 thousand million.

But governments do not organize lotteries just to make money. If they do not get into the business, they may lose money. Their citizens might play elsewhere. So when one country or state starts a lottery, its neighbors come under pressure to do the same. This snowballing effect is evident in the United States. In 1964 there was one State lottery; in 1989 there were 30.

Dreams of Wealth

Of course, there are plenty of people who are trying to get a piece of the consumer dollar. So how do promoters convince the public to spend money on lotteries? Advertising! Call in the professionals of persuasion!

Do advertisements stress that a portion (albeit small) of the proceeds will help fund education or provide care for the elderly? Far from it! That’s rarely mentioned. Instead, ads stress how much fun it would be to win millions of dollars. Here are a few examples:

◻ “The Fabulous Lifestyle of the Rich & Famous Could be Yours Instantly . . . When You Play Canada’s Celebrated, Multi-Million Dollar LOTTO 6/49.”

◻ “THE FLORIDA LOTTERY . . . Get Rich in America’s Greatest Lottery.”

◻ “Money Made in Germany​—STRIKE IT RICH and become a Millionaire overnight.”

Hard sell? It certainly is! Efforts to tone down advertising usually end when tickets don’t sell. In fact, promoters turn to ever more intense games and marketing to entice new players and to keep the old ones interested. Promoters must constantly offer something that looks new. Oregon’s lottery director James Davey said: “We have gambling themes, we do Olympics. At Christmas we do Holiday Cash. With Lucky Stars we play on people’s astrological signs. We find that if you run two or three, four or five games at the same time, you’ll sell more tickets.”

But the biggest attraction by far is a gigantic jackpot. In Lotto, when the prize money soars, as it did when it reached $115 million in Pennsylvania in 1989, it becomes big news. People stampede to buy tickets in what one author called a “gambler’s feeding frenzy.” Amid the hysteria, even those who don’t normally play the lottery reach for their money.

[Box on page 6]

Gambling Fever and Religion

“The Catholic Church has taught me to gamble. Bingo and raffles are absolutely no different from lotteries. If the Catholic Church would take the lead and stop all gambling, I would reconsider the idea of refraining from playing the lottery. If I am greedy, it is because it’s almost a sacrament in the Church.”​—Reader to the U.S. Catholic magazine.

“After the Sunday Mass, the second best-attended function at Catholic churches are the weekly bingo games, according to a survey of Catholic parishes by Notre Dame University.” However, several priests claim that most of those who attend the bingo games do not go to church.​—The Sunday Star-Ledger, New Jersey, U.S.A.

“Saint Pancras Brought Good Luck to Madrid” was the headline in the Spanish weekly ABC, international edition. The article continued: “‘It was Saint Pancras’ exclaimed again and again the two employees of the lottery store . . . where they had sold the only series of 21515, the ‘gordo’ [big one] worth 250 million [pesetas, or today, $2,500,000, U.S.], which has been distributed in Madrid. [The employees] confessed that they had prayed to the saint, whose image presides over their establishment and on which they had placed a sprig of parsley, to have the good fortune to sell the Christmas ‘gordo.’”

“Trying to find ways to explain their good fortune, the older winners tended to believe that God and destiny had singled them out to win the money. . . . ‘We want to believe that good fortune and bad fortune are attributed to something, not an accident,’ said Dr. Jack A. Kapchan, a psychology professor at the University of Miami. ‘And what else is there to attribute it to but God?’”​—The New York Times.

What does the Bible say about good luck? To the unfaithful in Israel, Jehovah said: “But you men are those leaving Jehovah, those forgetting my holy mountain, those setting in order a table for the god of Good Luck and those filling up mixed wine for the god of Destiny.”​—Isaiah 65:11.

How many of the relatively few winners stop to think that their isolated good fortune is based on the bad fortune of millions of losers? Does gambling reflect ‘love of neighbor’ in any way? Is it reasonable or Biblical to think that the Sovereign Lord of the universe should involve himself in such selfish vices as gambling?​—Matthew 22:39.

Lottery​—Who Wins? Who Loses?

The basic argument in favor of government lotteries is that they bring in millions of dollars to government, money that would probably otherwise be had only by raising taxes. ‘And how easy it is!’ say supporters. It’s like a tax that no one is required to pay; it’s voluntary. In fact, people are eager to pay; they wait in line to pay!

But what are some of the charges against lotteries?

One is that lottery advertisements are often uninformative or just plain misleading. They promote the idea that you are going to win. Typical is a Canadian lottery advertisement that states: “We make it easy to . . . WIN!!”

But how easy is it to win? Alie plays a West German lottery. The advertisement gushes: “Your winning chances are incredible.” Yet, Alie laments: “I’ve played the lottery for ten years, and I have never won anything. And I don’t know anybody else who has won anything either.”

For every big winner, there are millions like Alie, losers who put out their money week after week, year after year, but who get nothing in return. In the United States, those who win $1 million are 0.000008 percent of the 97 million lottery gamblers there.

The odds against winning a top prize are not merely one in a million (roughly, the odds against a person’s being struck by lightning); they can be one in many millions. For example, when it became clear that the bigger the jackpot, the more tickets were sold, the odds against winning the New York Lotto game shot up from 1 in 6 million to 1 in 12.9 million!

Little wonder that people charge lotteries with hustling unwary purchasers oblivious to the enormous odds against them. Dr. Valerie Lorenz, director of the U.S. National Center for Pathological Gambling, states simply: “Lotteries? It’s the biggest sucker bet there is. The odds are so outrageously against you.”

And what if you do win a million dollars? You won’t get it all. After the tax man takes his cut, winners in the United States receive $35,000 each year for 20 years. That is $700,000, reduced further in value by inflation over the 20 years.

Effect on the Poor

Another criticism is that the big spenders are poor people, those least able to afford it. Lottery promoters argue that this is untrue, that surveys show that the lottery is more popular among middle-income people. Lotteries are voluntary, they say; no one is compelled to play. Nevertheless, advertisements deliberately inflame the desires of players, and many are poor people. Said a convenience-store cashier in Florida: “We have a fixed group of people that we see every week. Some buy 10 tickets every day. Some buy 100 every week. They don’t have money for food, but they play ‘Lotto.’”

In some less developed countries, the situation is often even worse. Recently the Indonesian government reexamined its Porkas football lottery when the media reported that entire villages had gone “Porkas crazy.” Asiaweek magazine reported: “[Indonesian] newspapers were full of horror accounts: men beating their wives or children; children stealing money from their parents; children spending hard-earned money allocated for school fees​—all for Porkas.”

With the proliferation of lotteries worldwide, more and more people are introduced to gambling. Some, not just the poor, become compulsive gamblers​—lottery addicts. Arnie Wexler heads the Council on Compulsive Gambling in New Jersey, U.S.A. He says: “The legislators think they’ve found a painless, easy way to raise money, when, in fact, they’re destroying a lot of families, and a lot of businesses, and a lot of human beings, and a lot of lives.”

A Question of Values

Another major concern is that government lotteries have changed people’s attitudes toward gambling. Today’s State-operated “Play 3” or “Lucky Numbers” lotteries offer thousand-to-one odds but return only about 50 percent in prize money. Before government got into the business, the game was “vicious,” an illegal racket, a vice. Now the same game is called entertainment, fun, an act of civic responsibility!

Of course, an important difference between the illegal numbers game and government lotteries is that instead of profits going into the pockets of criminals, they support government projects. Nevertheless, many observers worry about the impact of lotteries on the ethical values of the society they are supposed to benefit.

This is because lotteries feed the hope and inclination to become rich without effort. Paul Dworin, editor of Gaming and Wagering Business, said: “In the past, the state has said that if you work hard, you’ll do well. Now, it’s, ‘Buy a ticket and you’ll be a millionaire.’ That’s a strange message for a state to send.” And George Will wrote in Newsweek: “The more people believe in the importance of luck, chance, randomness, fate, the less they believe in the importance of stern virtues such as industriousness, thrift, deferral of gratification, diligence, studiousness.”

Another concept, central to human society, is this: Individuals should not try to profit from the misfortunes of others. The promoters of lotteries, however, encourage the view that it is right for an individual to draw profit and pleasure through the losses of others. Such thinking is selfish; it spurns the Bible’s admonition: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”​—Matthew 22:39.

Despite the many voices of opposition, lotteries continue to grow dramatically throughout the earth. A visitor to West Africa observed hundreds of people massed around a State lottery building. “Why do all these people squander their money on the lottery,” he asked a resident, observing, “especially since they are poor people?”

“My friend, they play the lottery because it gives them hope,” replied the resident. “For many of them, it’s the only hope they have in life.”

But is winning the lottery really a hope? It’s much more an illusion, a mirage, an improbable dream. Certainly a conscientious Christian will not waste his time and resources in the vain pursuit of gambling wealth. How much better it is to follow the counsel of the apostle Paul, who wrote that wise people “rest their hope, not on uncertain riches, but on God, who furnishes us all things richly for our enjoyment.”​—1 Timothy 6:17.

[Blurb on page 8]

“The legislators think they’ve found a painless, easy way to raise money, when, in fact, they’re destroying a lot of families, and a lot of businesses, and a lot of human beings, and a lot of lives”

[Box on page 9]

Best Tips for Gamblers

“There is no colder smile than that of a bookmaker greeting a winning client. . . . It is a rare bookmaker who prevents a punter [gambler] from betting because his client is losing too much. . . . Remember, too, that successful punters are as rare as impoverished bookmakers.”​—Graham Rock, The Times, London.

“The guaranteed jackpot of $45 million in tonight’s Lotto drawing is the largest in New York State history. But the odds of winning it with a $1 bet are 12,913,582 to 1.”​—The New York Times.

“A fool and his money are soon parted.” Saying current since the 16th century.​—Familiar Quotations, by John Bartlett.

“Gambler, don’t rejoice; whoever wins today loses tomorrow.”​—A Spanish proverb.