Nearly two-thirds of those sampled in the survey didn't think state-run gaming provided benefits to their community, while 70 percent said all or most gaming revenues should be used to support schools.  And 90 percent said gambling hurts people. That included 19 percent who said gambling is harmful to most everyone."

"The state is gambling, if you will, on gaming as a revenue source, yet there's a divided public on its
merits," said Paul Slovic, president of Decision Research Inc., which conducted the telephone survey of 404 scientifically selected Oregonians April 24-29.

The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent. Decisions Research did the study on its
own and was not hired to do it by any outside group or business.  Steve Johnson, one of the company's researchers who co-authored the study, said there's been a lack of information about the public's perceptions of state-run gambling since Oregonians voted in 1904 to allow the Megabucks and scratch-off lottery games.
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PERCEPTIONS OF STATE-RUN GAMBLING

Would you vote to repeal stale-run gambling: 55 percent said yes.

State-run gambling benefits my community: 92 percent said no.

Do social problems of gambling outweigh the economic benefits: 55 percent said yes.

How should the be spent: 48 percent said "schools."

How big a problem is gambling addiction: 69 percent said it is a "very or somewhat serious problem."

("Public Perception of state-run Gambling in Oregon." Decision Research Inc.)

"We've been concerned and interested in issues about gambling for years," Johnson said. "Since the
first lottery law was passed in 1984, there's been a real evolution in state-run gambling."  In recent years, state-run games have expanded to include video poker, Keno, sports betting and other forms of gambling. Several Indian tribes also have constructed casinos throughout the state.

State gaming proceeds originally were used only for economic development, but voters in 1995 allowed money to be used to pay for education, as well. The state now clears about $600 million per biennium in gambling profits, which is about 25 percent of the money people spend on state-sanctioned games of chance.

Johnson said the study revealed much about the public's perception of state-run gaming in Oregon.
Forty-eight percent of the respondents said gaming money should be spent on schools, and 22 percent said proceeds should be used for "schools and something else." Only 2 percent said proceeds should be spent on economic development.  Sixty-nine percent said gambling addiction was a "very or somewhat serious problem," and the same percentage said poor people who gamble posed a very serious or somewhat serious social problem.

David Hooper, a spokesman for the Oregon Lottery Commission, said people's perceptions often are "not reality. Perceptions often are based on what people don't know. For example, 75 percent of all Iottery revenues are used to  fund public schools, or about 10 percent of the money the state will spend on elementary, middle and high schools during 1997-99, Hooper said.  "It was the people who created us in the first place," Hooper said. "We have fulfiued everything the people and the Legislature have told us to do."

But he admitted that people look differently at the lottery agency since the Legislature authorized video poker.  "The dynamics changed," he said. "It changed this agency and how people perceive it."  Source:  6/10/97, The Register-Guard, by Lance Robertson.

Lim got his measure out of one committee. But impressive opposition awaits him.  First, there's
the Oregon Restaurant Association, which has shown its Political muscle on several occasions in
the Legislature and at the polls. The association represents most of the state's restaurants and
taverns, many of which have made a bundle on the hefty commissions they receive for housing
state video poker machines. The ORA will certainly call in as many chits as necessary to keep
SJR 28 ~om going to the May 1998 ballot.

The state itself has placed ever-growing reliance on revenues from the lottery -- particularly from
the lucrative video poker games. Video poker generates roughly 70 percent of the state's total
lottery take and is projected to yield $442 million in 1997-99. The Legislature has been gleefully
Plowing that money into various agency budgets for the past few years. And lawmakers would
not relish deciding the budget cuts that would be necessary if video poker money stopped
flowing.

Indian tribes that operate casinos also have reason to oppose SJR 28. Their compacts with the
state allow their casinos to offer only the same gambling options that state law allows the state
itself to offer. If Oregon voters were to do away with video poker, a big chunk of the.tribes"
casino income would be eliminated as well.

The tribes rely on casino revenues for a wide variety of commendable purposes. Despite all this,
the Legislature should send .Lim"s proposal to the ballot for one good reason: It would generate a
debate this state has needed for quite a while. Several questions need to be addressed:

Has the state's reliance on gambling income put it in an untenable moral position?

When the voters approved a state-run lottery in November 1984, were they at the same time
endorsing the expansion of gambling to the point that has been reached today?

Do a majority of voters support video poker or would they prefer the original lottery, a $10
million scratch-off ticket and mini-numbers game?

While the state's income from lottery proceeds has consistently increased, it has been leveling off
recently and could begin to decline, particularly with the tribes' casinos coming on line. Thus, is
lottery money stable enough for the state to depend on for basic programs?

The original 1984 constitutional measure that created the lottery restricted use of the proceeds to
"economic development," the definition of which has been stretched. Should the State decide
?once and for all what "economic development" means vis-a-vis the lottery, or perhaps remove
the restriction altogether?

The number of problem gamblers has risen as steadily as video poker income. Many individuals
and families have been pushed to the edge - in some cases beyond the edge - because of
gambling addiction. What obligation, if any, does the state have to help these people who have
been victimized by a state program?

These are a few of the questions Oregon should debate. A ballot measure to eliminate video
poker would be a good way to bring them to the fore and get some answers Brom Oregon voters.
The Legislature should pass SJR 28 and ~But it on the ballot. Source: 5/15/97 - The Register-
Guard - Editorial

the reason is simple: gambling corrupts. That's why NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue fought
hard for that law to protect professional football from gambling's inexorable fbrers. And it's why
the NFL wants President Clinton to appoint a savvy former athlete Oike Roger Staubach or Jack
Kemp) to the national commission just set up by Congress to investigate the impact of gambling
in America.

The lobby for the evil industry that turns over a half-trillion dollars every year claims that legal
gambling merely substitutes for illegal gambling, thereby letting the public in on the profit to
support education and all good things.

What an absurdity. State-advertised lotteries and state-approved casinos add to, rather than
replace, gamblers'  operations. An illicit bookie, with no cut to give the state, can give higher
odds than those offered by the taxpaying "gaming industry"; moreover, high rollers who collected
$10,000 from their bookie on Sunday's Super Bowl don't share their winnings with the tax
collector. State-sponsored gambling gives moral sanction and fresh impetus to bookies,
numbers racketeers -- and the Mafia.

Voters across the nation are awakening to the scam perpetrated on them by the gamblers' lobby
and the politicians in its pocket.  In New York, politicians who thought a pro-casino bill would slip
through are stunned by the ferocity of grass-roots opposition.

In Louisiana, casino interests spread millions in last-minute walkin'-around money on the streets
of New Orleans to snatch an election for Democrat Mary Landrieu, who may now join Nevada's
Richard Bryan as the U.S. Senate's defender of "gaming entertainment." (If glitzy casinos are
such fun, why is Nevada's suicide rate the nation's worst?)

In Maryland, the state Democratic Party -- home of liberal Sens. Paul Sarbanes and Barbara
Mikulski -- is now trying to ram through a law bringing slot machines to racetracks. If the "tax
players" succeed in overriding the gutsy Republican governor's opposition, Marylanders will slide
down the craps shooters' slippery slope, and home computers will become slots for tots.

With local Democratic regimes in the lead for succumbing to gambling interests, you might think
Republicans would take the lead in making this a defining values issue.  But that prospect was
kicked in the head first by Bob Dole's acceptance of $500,000 from the Las Vegas crowd, and
more recently the dismaying dive taken by Newt Gingrich, who used his speaker's appointment
to the commission to name a top Vegas casino boss.

Assume that House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt follows Gingrich's example by choosing
the sweetheart labor leader being pressed on him by the casino lobby. That would leave the
salvation of the gambling study in the hands of Bill Clinton, who has three picks out of the nine.

Will the president appoint a trio to illuminate the truth about gambling's false promises and
regressive taxation? Will he act to protect compulsive gamblers from a life of crime?   Don't
count on it. Now in the final stages of being vetted in the White House are (1) a member of the
gaming-regulating bureaucracy dependent on keeping an industry to regulate, (2) a Minnesota Native American likely to be manipulated by the billion-dollar tribe of Croupier Indians and (3) a split-the-difference think-tanker.

No anti-gambling Democrats like Paul Simon or Bill Bradley; no moralist Native American like the newly elected head of New York's Seneca tribe; nobody the gamblers' lobby is worried about.

Brace yourselves for the painless-taxation shell game. Those croupiers in black tie? Hard-working union members caring for families. Those shills in net stockings serving drinks to suckers? Mothers striving to stay off welfare. Casino owners ripping off $45 billion a year in profits?  Upright small investors and pension funds.

Don't be fooled. Gambling corrupts. The Super Bowl Monday-morning quarterbacks should watch who appoints whom to the commission, and how much the kickback will be.

  William Safire is a columnist for The New York Times.  Source:  1/29/97 - The Register-Guard.