Alpine Liquors has sold $3.7 million dollars in lottery tickets during the past five years... “I've seen so much heartbreak,” said Antoinette Borges, manager of the store. “This game ruins a lot of people's lives."Lindsay Peterson's story for the Tampa Tribune, "Lottery Pushes Floridians to Spend More Amid Recession," is the kind of principled, responsible and dramatically relevant reporting that is much too rare in mainstream newspapers today. And brave too. For few are daring enough to expose the seamy, soulless effects of legal gambling.
Here are a few of the highlights of Peterson's story:
* “The state pays millions to probe the thoughts and habits of potential lottery players. Consultants ask what they buy at convenience stores, whether they rent videos, go to theme parks, even how they feel about owning things and belonging to a group.
* “The lottery needs to "reach people who have never played," Florida Lottery Secretary Leo DiBenigno said, partly because of the recession but mostly because the state's growth has slowed.”
* “Anthony Miyazaki of Florida International University in Miami has spent more than a decade researching lottery players. He questions whether the state should promote a practice that exploits human weakness. "How do you have high expectations for people when the government itself is promoting what is likely a false hope?" he asked.”
* “Lottery officials pay game creators and researchers millions to monitor players' responses to new games and advertising. For about $2.4 million a year, global market researcher Ipsos Reid regularly surveys thousands of Floridians. The researchers ask hundreds of questions about the lottery games people play — where, why and how much they spend on each one. They ask about the messages they perceive from lottery ads. And they ask about their attitudes toward life, fate and gambling. The consultant breaks out the answers by gender, race, age, income and education, devoting special attention to Hispanics.”
* “Studies of lottery spending, including one from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, show the money comes largely from Social Security, unemployment and other government support. Government, in other words, is paying government — with a lot of money siphoned off in the process. It's inefficient, the reserve bank writers concluded.”
Again, this is excellent reporting about a very important (and generally protected) social problem. Therefore, you may want to zip over a quick thank-you to the Tribune to express your gratitude for their fine story. I did.
(Here's the contact page. Use either the form for the Tampa Tribune or Tampa Bay Online. To increase the chances of my note being seen, I sent one to both! However, you must select a topic at the head of each form. In the TPO form I selected "Story Tips" and for the Tribune I selected "Letters to the Editor.")
My thanks to Les Bernal of Stop Predatory Gambling for bringing this article to my attention, an article he called "one of the best investigative stories on the lottery that has appeared anywhere in America in recent years." Check out the Stop Predatory Gambling website for more information.
