GUEST COLUMN : Distrust and distaste

FAYETTEVILLE — As the kickoff of the Arkansas lottery nears, I find myself feeling nothing but distrust and distaste.

This lottery is beginning in our state on the noble idea of funding college scholarships, but the seedy underbelly of the lottery remains the same.

In essence, people are buying hope and excitement, with little chance of fulfilling that hope and every chance of being disappointed. Unsuccessful, they will likely try again in what for some will become a destructive cycle.

Lest you have any doubt that what is being sold is not a good chance to improve your finances, remember what the new executive director of the Arkansas lottery, Ernie Passailaigue, said: "This is to be played for fun and entertainment only. If you play a lottery to win a prize, you are going to be disappointed." He added, "If you think you are going to play the lottery and change your stead in life, you are wrong" and "We don't want people's money if they think they can play [the] lottery to change their financial wealth. They will be sadly mistaken."

He said he planned to tell everybody that. Well, maybe one time. It wouldn't be a very promotional message on an ongoing basis.

Nevertheless, I hope we do learn the odds of each game the lottery rolls out, which is also unlikely to be repeated often, because although Passailaigue said this is "all about the scholarships" he also said that the lottery "is basically an entrepreneurial business that sells a product." Translation: It's a business, and a business survives on profit. Reportedly, when Powerball tickets are sold, the odds of winning the jackpot will be one in 195 million.

My distrust of the lottery arises in part out of my experience with the lottery in Kansas. I was always waiting for someone to show me something concrete and specific that the lottery had accomplished or had provided for us. But the benefits always seemed elusive, vague, hard to pin down. So we'd better have some mighty fine accounting on a regular basis of just how much scholarship money has gone to whom and how that has made a difference. Passailaigue is projecting a possible $95 million for scholarship money by the end of year, but that's based on a lot of "ifs," as in "if there are $1 million a day in lottery sales" and "let's just say that's what we'll gross." And of that hoped-for $1 million a day in sales, only 25 percent is net profit. Don't forget we have to hire all those multitudes of people and pay all those big salaries to run and advertise the thing. (Passailaigue said there has been too much talk about the salaries, his being $324,000.)

But aside from my distrust is my distaste for the lottery. Passailaigue says "our goal is to not have a few players spending a lot of money but to have a lot of players spending a little money, and for them to be entertained." There's that word again. Yetwe know there will be some dedicated players who get themselves into debt and even ruin their lives and that of their families and businesses.

Not to fear, though, because although Arkansas has no state program for treating gambling addictions and as of this writing a program has not been defined, the state Department of Human Services is going to design a program. And until that program is in place, Passailaigue said the hotline for the National Council on Problem Gambling in Washington will be posted where tickets are sold. In tiny type, no doubt.

There is a great deal of irony in selling a product that is supposed to be entertaining, with the allure that you could win millions (but are unlikely to), and then in some low-key way providing a hotline for the deep problems you know you will be generating. It's similar to promoting alcohol and then telling people to drink responsibly, or selling cigarettes with a health warning on them. Do it, but don't do it. But do it. And do a lot of it so we can make more profit. Sorry, scholarships.

We have a glitzy casino near Siloam Springs that regularly flashes in signs that are blindingly bright at night about who has won what sum. My question is always: What did they have to spend to get to that win? And how long before they have spent all their winnings and gone even deeper in debt? But it's all for fun, right? And all the kids that are waiting for their gambling parents to come home are having fun, too, no doubt. But at least Passailaigue assured us that Arkansas will market the lottery so that not just the poor people play. Is responsible gambling an oxymoron?

I pledge here and now that I will never buy a lottery ticket. I never have, and I never will. I would far rather put 10 percent of my earnings each month into a savings account, where the odds are enormously greater that I will have something in my old age and for my heirs. After all, the stories of what happens to the few who win the lottery aren't that encouraging.

But there is a lot of misery out there that is hoping for alleviation by the big win, odds notwithstanding. And if nothing else, the state and the lottery are determined to provide those people "entertainment."

Barbara Warner is a former congressional press secretary and White House appointee at the U.S. Commerce Department. She lives in Siloam Springs and writes a monthly column for the Benton County Daily Record.