Faith in Action

Hat Tip: Washington Post

Gambling Away Our Principles
Sunday, May 18, 2008; B08

It is easy to get caught up in the false promise of slots — of easy money and a quick fix to all that ails Maryland. But the simple truth is that Maryland can’t win and that Marylanders will lose if slots are legalized.

Gambling is becoming an increasingly pervasive element of American society, and legalizing slot machines in the state would be one more example of our society’s eagerness to abandon hard work and ingenuity in favor of a Band-Aid for a gaping wound. Encouraging gambling in our communities would be irresponsible and would result in lasting and irreversible harm.

Proponents of slots contend that their legalization would help finance public education. We ask: What lessons are we teaching our children? That they should throw hard-earned money away in the false hope of a big payday? Those who say slots will create revenue for the state don’t acknowledge the catastrophic ramifications of such a decision. For the state to win, the player must lose. As people of faith, we are called on to speak out to protect Maryland from the insidious vice of gambling.

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Winston Churchill once said, “Those who do not study history are bound to repeat it.”

In 1960 civic organizations in Anne Arundel County and Charles County began to fight to remove slot machines from their jurisdictions. The battle was joined in 1962 by a Grand Jury from Anne Arundel County, which found “extensive corruption, illegal use of the machines by minors, and increased crime.”

In 2007, we should have learned from the mistakes of Maryland citizens during the 1960’s. We’ve had slot machines in Maryland and it has been proven that slot machines will be detrimental to our livelihood. When slot machines were in Charles County the Department of Defense requested that slot machines be removed from the borders of its naval base because sailors were repeatedly losing their salaries to these machines before returning home to their families. Those were the old style mechanical slot machines.

A recent report studying the new style video terminals in Canada showed that 25% of Canadian slot players were either at risk, or problem gamblers. This study confirms the much-reported notion that current video slot machines are designed to be the crack cocaine of gambling.

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