Rick's Gambling Guide

The Arkansas Lottery and Welfare

If you have not heard about it or seen for yourself, the Arkansas Lottery now has vending machines. Vending machines that require the use of one’s ID in order to proceed with your purchase. You must be 18 to play the lottery and your ID is supposed to serve as proof of your age. This new technology has sparked an idea in my head that I am sure will be controversial but then again it would not be me if it did not. I will get to that in the second part of my rant.

I decided to send my 16 year old armed with my driver’s license, to see if he was able to score a lottery ticket. The answer was yes, he was able to proceed and able to purchase a lottery ticket. Whose bright idea was this to install a lottery vending machine? Now the question is, does the Lottery Commission really care who is purchasing the lottery tickets that are supposed to be funding scholarships?

I really do not think they do care, especially knowing that they did not meet their profit in the previous quarter. The lottery is supposedly, what is currently funding the majority of Arkansas college scholarships. When you think about the largest percentage of the population that purchases tickets, the poor, it is rather a sham of an excuse to have a lottery. More times than not the population, funding the scholarships cannot even afford college themselves.

Now with that said, the big idea that crossed my mind was to invite lawmakers to use this vending machine concept to find out how many people are buying lottery tickets when they are on any sort of public assistance. The amount they spend on such items should be deducted from their government assistance benefit amount for the next month. I am sorry, but if you have money to buy a lottery ticket, you should be using it instead to buy your food or pay your rent, not let me do it for you as a taxpayer. I do not care how innocent you want to claim it is; it is still gambling.

Now, I give you the controversy that I have promised. To take this concept one step further, I would introduce legislation that would use one’s drivers license to see total spending on cigarettes and alcohol by welfare recipients, this would be easy to do as those things already require a drivers license for purchase. Maybe then, we would see who really needs the assistance and who is abusing it. Most importantly, we would see who is truly in need of the help versus those who want taxpayers to pay for their needs so they don’t have to. I do not know about you but I am sick of taking care of those who waste their own dollars on wants such as those stated above, but that is just my opinion.