Gambling: So, Legalize It?

The ancient plea for legalized vice - the granting of respectability through recognition - the reply is that gambling is not instinctive in man.

Gambling is an acquired habit, and nothing shows this more clearly than the manner in which it was stimulated and grew within the gambler.

It also elevates money and material gain to a place of priority in life; it encourages dependence on chance rather than on the providence of the source of our faith.

The gambler uses the individual as a tool for his own profit; a common term for the customer is 'sucker.' However, God created man for an excellence which has no place for intentional profiteering in human misery or for dependence o the whim and caprice of chance.

Betting should be legalized as a means of providing revenue for the state.

There are those who paint such places as Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Hot Springs or Charles County, Maryland, as golden paradises with built-in solutions for the economic plight of hard-pressed business and government.

In reply, one might cite the comment of a Los Angeles police chief on the proposal to legalize bookmaking in New York City: 'Any society that bases its financial structure on the weaknesses of its people doesn't deserve to survive.'

The state has not only ethical, but also economical responsibility for the well-being of its citizenry.

Speaking in the United States Senate Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin advised the new state of Alaska not to legalize gambling as an economic panacea.

The idea that gambling will be a revenue raiser is an illusion, he said; every dollar raised from such sources means five dollars spent in higher police costs, higher court costs, higher penitentiary costs, and higher relief costs.

The fact that Nevada's crime rate is double and its suicide rate triple the national average would seem to support the former senator's warning.

Additional economic aspects of the legalized gambling picture are the high rate of embezzlement by persons seeking funds to bet or to replace sums lost in that manner.

The reluctance of industry to locate in areas where gambling is rampant, and the invitation to corruption, gambling offers to public officials.

Virgil Peterson of the Chicago crime commission has pointed out that the Louisiana Lottery Company controlled Louisiana politically for 20 years in the late 19th century, a situation that eventually led the people of that state to outlaw the lottery.

The appeal to legalize gambling as a means toward the financial support of the state inevitably turns out to be a deceit and a sham.