Last week, our local news ran a story I found completely absurd. Some organization (Gamblers Anonymous, maybe?) was complaining that the Virginia Lottery doesn’t use enough of its income to fund help for gambling addicts.  Now, I’m not a gambler.  Not only could the cheapest discount hotels Las Vegas has to offer not lure me for a visit (Vegas simply has no appeal for me), I don’t gamble on anything – in the broadest sense of the word.  I am just not a risk-taker.  But, even if gambling were a problem for me, I would find this ridiculous.

The news story said that very, very few of those who play the Lottery are addicted to gambling.  (Apparently the Lottery already funds some sort of help line, and only a tiny percentage of the calls they get are truly about gambling addictions.)  So we’re looking at this not being a big problem among their customers and, thus, something I find it amazing they do anything (the help line) about at all.

The real crux of the thing for me, though, is that, even if all of their customers were gambling addicts, would that really be their problem?  Is it their responsibility to “fix” people?  If the government is going to allow for a certain thing which either is a vice, or can become a vice for certain people, does that make it their responsibility to fund help for everyone who falls into sin?  (Whether or not I think we should have a Lottery is a separate issue altogether.)

I don’t see the Alcoholic Beverage Control funding Alcoholics Anonymous (maybe they do, and I just don’t know it?), nor would I expect them to.  And alcoholism is a much greater public threat than gambling addiction!  A gambling addict can make a mess of his life and his family’s, but he’s not likely to kill me because he got behind the wheel of a car.  I just thought this whole news story was crazy.