Powerball fever gripped the nation this week as millions purchased tickets for the chance to win Wednesday’s $1.6 billion jackpot. Here in Richmond County, players penciled in their selections and clutched their tickets as the numbers were drawn on live television.

When the digital dust settled, officials announced three players — from Tennessee, Florida and California — would split the jackpot, eight tickets earning a $2 million prize had been sold and there were 73 winning a cool $1 million apiece.

While the highest-ever lottery prize generated buzz and enjoyed cloying coverage from the national media, North Carolina video sweepstakes operators are branded as criminals and the tens of thousands who play the games of chance are often cast as problem gamblers indulging in a guilty pleasure.

We don’t see a lot of difference between the North Carolina Education Lottery and video sweepstakes cafes. State lawmakers do — and they’ve spent a small fortune in taxpayer money defending sweepstakes bans from a litany of lawsuits to ensure the government-run cash cow doesn’t face competition from the private sector.

Laws against gambling stem from religious beliefs that the activity is sinful and moral claims that it’s an addictive behavior harming society at large.

We believe the government has no business preventing free adults from wagering what belongs to them. Those who feel gambling is a sin or social ill can choose to abstain and persuade others to do likewise with word and deed, not by force of law and threat of arrest.

A lottery is, by definition, a form of gambling. The North Carolina Education Lottery is a monopoly many moralists have learned to live with because it pours cash for school construction into the public coffers. Richmond County has received more than $19 million in lottery revenue.

If gambling is good when it benefits the schools, couldn’t a tax on sweepstakes halls be directed to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction too?

Finally, some sweepstakes opponents say the games lure in primarily low-income players who can least afford to lose, and that private parlors are somehow more predatory and deceptive than government gambling, which is presumably beyond reproach.

Tell that to state Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam, who lashed out against the lottery this week for trumpeting the Powerball’s marquee jackpot of $1.6 billion. That’s the before-tax total a winner would have received if he or she opted for an annuity. For a lump-sum payout, the prize was a more modest $930 million.

Stam, the House speaker pro-tem, wants his colleagues in the General Assembly to enact tighter controls on North Carolina Education Lottery advertising and require the lottery to publicize the long odds against winning each prize.

“If this were a private swindle, it would be banned by the Federal Trade Commission,” Stam said in a fiery statement to the press. “But since lotteries are regulated by the states, they avoid those rules — and families suffer for it.”

By not allowing private businesses to compete with the state lottery and refusing to regulate both with a fair and even hand, North Carolina legislators have written protectionism and hypocrisy into the people’s lawbooks.

John D. Simmons | The Charlotte Observer The Gaston County Sheriff’s Office destroyed 18 confiscated video poker machines in 2001, dumping them into the Gaston County Landfill, where they were crushed and covered with dirt.
https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/web1_KRTS_NC-VIDEOPOKER_3_CH.jpgJohn D. Simmons | The Charlotte Observer The Gaston County Sheriff’s Office destroyed 18 confiscated video poker machines in 2001, dumping them into the Gaston County Landfill, where they were crushed and covered with dirt.

A Daily Journal editorial