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Should Idaho
Legalize
Gambling?
For
By Joe TrudeII
"The more things change, the more they remain the same." This
maxim is aptly suited to Idaho's present dilemma.
The change; our outlook on gambling, is inevitable if this state's tour-
ist, recreation and entertainment industries are to survive. Our need for
ever-increasing taxes also will direct attention to this untapped tax
source.
Things will remain the same in that we will merely be legalizing
something that has been here since man began. Adam and Eve took the
first chance when they chose the apple. Things will remain the same in
Idaho because efforts to make gambling illegal have never succeeded.
We can try to persist in ignoring a fact of life, but that won't work
either.
The fact is gambling always has and always will continue to be a part
of human nature. U.S. News and World Report notes that more than
$146 billion will be spent on recreation and entertainment in the United
States next year. That's right, one-hundered-and-forty-six thousand mil-
lion dollars of fun money!
The Washington Post estimates that half of this money will be spent
on gambling.
Because we persist in not reevaluating our archaic moral code, we
(and most of our tourists) have to go down the road to almost any other
state now to spend our entertainment billions in earnest. And it will be
done!
It is morally acceptable down the road. This easiest of all ways to pay
taxes is also accepted there to the relief of their taxpayers. These other
states have changed their outlook on morals. They realized finally that
our basic chance -taking nature will always reamain the same.
The main moral issues have been the social problem caused by the
compulsive gambler and by criminal elements. Time magazine, in a re-
cent article, places the problem gambler at less than 2 per cent of the
population. A federal government study on gambling figures this minute
percentage will be even further reduced by legalized gambling. Legal
gaming is a cash -only sport; whereas, it need not be through a bookie.
The truly addicted gambler finds his game here or close by, regard-
less of our best efforts. So we have been living with the worst of the
minor problem anyway, but denying the vast majority of the large, easi-
est to pay tax source in the name of nonexisatent benevolence.
Criminal elements thrive best in illegal locales. Gaming is illegal in
Idaho. Therefore, if it will be done, and it is, who can the local gambler
turn to now?
` — 60
Increasing taxes or broadening our tax base as neighboring states
have done may even become an issue this year. Taxpayers have been
warned recently of more money problems for the. convening legislature,
but there is also a move afoot to look at new revenue sources.
Typical tax sources for local governments have been exploited to the
breaking point as expressed in more and more failing bond issues for
schools, sewer plants, and other municipal services. Now the service
failures are threatened at the state level, or another increase in taxes
will be needed.
A "switching horses" effort to lower property taxes at the expense of
increased income taxes is being considered by the Association of Idaho
Cities. They are also considering a local city -county sales tax. But no
matter how they "fine tune" our mills, tills or wills, these funds will
still come from the same taxpayers' nondisposable or bread-and-butter
money. So, pressure is mounting to look elsewhere. The first logical al-
ternative would appear to be the taxpayer and vacationer's disposable or
recreation funds.
There is an increasing number of voters asking why Idaho is not capi-
talizing on its recreation and tourist potential. The state's hotel -motel
industry, for example, and its high rate of bankruptcy is a tragedy com-
pared to Nevada's plat: to add several thousdand more hotel rooms in
1977. Tax revenue lost by idle or failing Idaho resorts, particularly last
month's disastrous $59-million loss at Bailey is also being noted.
Thousands of voters have in fact already signed a petition presently
being circulated requesting a vote on reviewing and possibly moderniz-
ing our tax base.
The present slump in the state's mainstay, agriculture, indicates an
urgent need for diversification of income sources. Most of today's suc-
cessful businesses are heavily committed to multiple interests. That old
axiom of "not putting all the eggs in one basket" was never more ap-
plicable than the present.
Gambling taxes alone probably will not fill the gap, but if it induces
the tourist to tarry a bit, the two in combination could have a signific-
ant impact on Idaho's future.
Those of us not endorsing this form of recreation can be consoled
with Thomas Jefferson's reflections on gambling as "a salutary instru-
ment wherin the tax is laid on the willing only."
►AHO STATESMAN, Boise, Sunday, December 12, 1976 PAGE 3G
Against
By Stanley D. Crow
"It's the greatest thing in the world for the Mob, and there's no
way to keep 'em out. Who's going to be the pit bosses, the money
handlers? Nobody but the Mob has the money for casinos." —
Time Magazine, Dec. 6, 1976.
According to Time Magazine, legal gambling systems, such as lotter-
ies and off-track betting, have only increased the number of bettors, the
sums they wager and the amount that goes to illegal gambling.
Those who promote the legalization of gambling in Idaho generally do
so on two grounds: 1) Their belief that it is part of their "freedom" to
engage in gambling; and 2) the argument that legalized gambling will
be an economic benefit to the state and legitimate business, while
reducing illegitimate business. They are wrong on both counts.
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1) Gambling imposes its own moral climate on society and violates
the freedom of those who must live in that climate.
It is no secret that Nevada, with its legalized gambling, is apparently
a center for organized crime. According to the Time article, only re-
cently has a tough state gaming commission in Nevada been able to
purge the industry of blatant Mafia control.
The evidence is simply overwhelming for the following propositions:
1) Legalized gambling helps, rather than hinders, illegal gambling.
2) It is virtually impossible to keep organized crime out of legal gam-
bling, let alone illegal gambling.
3) Legal gambling brings with it a climate of moral decay, increased
crime costs, prostitution and so on, a climate which is forced upon an
unwilling society.
The proponents of legalized gambling usually contend, in essence, that
gambling is a "victimless" crime.
They could not be further from the truth. In the broadest sense, gam-
bling, whether illegal or legal, creates an atmosphere of lawlessness
which reduces the restraints on crimes which are theoretically unre-
lated to gambling. What makes legalized gambling worse than illegal,
gambling is that legalized gambling simply means more gambling, and
therefore a greater tendency to lawlessness.
Anyone who has his eyes open can see that the moral climate in
Nevada is far inferior to the moral climate in Idaho, and everyone —
both those who are willing and those who are unwilling — has to live
within the moral climate, whatever it is. In Nevada, those who propose
gambling, prostitution and all the ofther effects of organized crime,
nevertheless must live with those effects.
Those who say that is part of their "freedom" to gamble ignore the
fact that of necessity someone's values are going to be imposed on so-
ciety; no society exists without values, whether they ar good ones or
bad ones. It is not a question of whether values will be imposed on so-
ciety, but whose values.
2) The economics of legalized gambling are a bad risk.
Anyone who proposes legalized gambling as a means of raising reve-
nue for the state hasn't done his homework. Other than Nevada, no-
where does the take from gambling contribute more than 4 per cent of a
state's budget, and in most cases it amounts to less than 2 per cent.
Nevertheless, the state -run lotteries constitute a highly regressive form
of taxation, because, as Harvard economist Roger Brinner points out,
poor people gamble a far higher percentage of their income than do the
wealthy, and estimates of the administration costs range as high as 30
per cent for the state lotteries, while other forms of taxation can be
administered for 2 per cent of the revenue.
What about increased business activity? And what about the profits
that some persons would make if gambling were legalized?
Here we get to the real crux of the issue. Most of the vociferous sup-
port for the legalization of gambling in Idaho has not come from state
officials who see a need for greater revenue; it has come from the
tavern owners who want to open gambling establishments.
Those profits for the few must be balanced against the costs for the
many. Will those profits for the few outweigh the costs we will all have
to pay if gambling is legalized and organized crime comes in to run it?
If gambling were legalized in Idaho and organized crime gained an influ-
ence in it, would the owners of the gambling establishments be willing
to pay the related social costs, such as the very likely increase in
narcotics traffic? If alcoholism shows an increase if gambling is le-
galized, would those profits for the few outweigh the social costs of in-
creased population pressure as more outsiders move into Idaho?
These are questions which the proponents of legalized gambling would
rather ignore, but they are also questions which will have to be satisfac-
torily answered, with clear-cut evidence, before a credible case can be
made for legalization of gambling in Idaho.