Lottery Can Be Addictive
Lottery is a form of gambling wherein participants pay for the privilege of attempting to win a prize. It is an activity that has been around for thousands of years and its popularity continues to rise. In fact, lottery is one of the most popular pastimes in the United States. It contributes billions of dollars annually to the economy and is a major source of entertainment. However, like any other form of gambling, lottery can be addictive.
In fact, the word “lottery” is a contraction of the Middle Dutch noun lot “fate,” or “fate decided by chance.” This practice of chance-deciding fate goes back to ancient times. The Old Testament instructs Moses to distribute land by lot; a similar procedure was used to determine slave distribution during Saturnalian feasts in Rome.
The modern state lottery grew out of this tradition. It was conceived as a painless way for state governments to raise money for a broad array of public uses without raising taxes. But it quickly became a dependency that state officials couldn’t control.
Initially, state lotteries operated as traditional raffles where the public would purchase tickets for a future drawing that was often weeks or even months away. But as revenues expanded, the industry began to evolve, and state officials found themselves compelled to introduce new games to maintain or increase revenues.
Super-sized jackpots were the key to driving ticket sales, not to mention generating free publicity on news sites and TV. But they also enticed compulsive gamblers and obscured the regressivity of lottery income in states with high poverty rates.