This set out to be a straight-forward rebuttal of the recent effort to introduce a hitherto don’t-think-about-it, constitutionally prohibited lottery into the Nevada gambling ecosystem. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s even up for debate since, in general, it’s a well-documented unsound, shady proposition that, historically, never delivers what it promises.

No innovation or controls in the modern era makes the lottery better. It’s a uniquely low-barrier, dream-chase version of gambling with 10 times worse (at best) odds of hitting a royal flush and all the grace of getting struck by lightning in a field. It creates an insignificant amount of new jobs or infrastructure. Traditionally, it’s been a last-ditch canard to squeeze money from the populace in places that lacked the will or support for full-blown casino-style gambling or a distraction to give cover to politicians uneager to face campaign ads after they raise taxes to pay for societal needs.  

Lottery explicitly relies on the bulk of its revenues from impulse by the most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods at the taciturn counter of a liquor or convenience store. It has been universally deemed to be a straight-up regressive tax on the poor. It primarily, if not exclusively, targets and derives most its revenue from local residents in ZIP codes saddled with the greatest economic stressors. 

It sailed through the Nevada Legislature. 

And so while this started out as a rebuttal to lottery, after listening to the testimony, the public statements of supporters and appreciating polling that shows overwhelming voter support (where if it passes the Legislature a second time will end up on the ballot), I decided to pivot to: “how we even talk about gambling, anymore?”

It’s 2023. The limited range of dialogue now falls somewhere between gambling is flawless with no downside to finding new ways to get everyone gambling to gambling is perfect but we don’t need things such as a lottery because that’s not as great as all the other gambling.

Believe it or not, gambling discourse, even in our state, used to have a little more … nuance.

History of Nevada’s gambling guard rails

For better and worse, gambling has been in our little slice of the Old West since before Nevada became a state in 1864. Rip roaring, frontier games like poker and faro. Dice, too, and as early as there were commercial slot machines in 1905, they were in Nevada. Still, it used to be a complicated issue with a swinging pendulum.

In fact, our first territorial governor, James Nye (as in the county) was vehemently against gambling. He said, “of all the seductive vice extant, I regard that of gambling as the worst.” His successor and the first governor of the new state of Nevada, Henry “Why Didn’t They Name a County After Me” Blasdel hated gambling even more. Yet, despite his strong efforts to ban it, 1867 saw decriminalization and lowering the gambling age to 17. In 1873, new efforts to ban gambling failed, but measures to protect the public, notably raising the gambling age to 21, making cheating at gambling a felony and banning advertising for gambling were passed.

Then, on March 5, 1877, a bill that doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough was passed by the Nevada Legislature. Formally called “An Act to prohibit the winning of money from persons who have no right to gamble it away,” it essentially disallowed people with needs or debt to gamble. Further, if someone decided to gamble anyway, that person’s family could let casinos know, and then it became a crime punishable by six months in jail for any establishment to let that person gamble. Basically the “please don’t let my daddy gamble, I’m hungry” act, it remained on the books for 35 years until Jan. 1, 1912. Arguably, it was only repealed because, by 1909, the pendulum had come back and most forms of gambling were banned for a decade alongside criminal penalties (some very stiff).

Of course, gambling always seems to find a way. By 1919, “social games,” “nickel slots” and “pari-mutuel betting” were again allowed with the most notable of a few new restrictions being a $2 cap on wagers. And while illegal gambling proliferated with turn-the-other-way law enforcement kept on a-flowing like drinking through Prohibition, there was still a universal understanding that Nevada could maintain a setup where gambling was little more than gentle diversion.

Then, in 1931, Las Vegas started the journey to become Las Vegas as we know it with the statewide passage of the “Wide Open Gambling Bill.” The consensus motivation for its passage was low-population; Nevada needed revenue and luring tourists to take their money was optimal. Thus, we were the first state to allow most gambling, that is, except a lottery, which was still banned by the Nevada Constitution. They even let stupid games like keno roll (aka bingo for people who lack eye-hand coordination), but rejected locals-focused lottery.

It makes sense. Over the years, as regulations (and regulatory bodies) took shape inside Nevada, there was a sense that if gambling was going to happen, it should be an attraction to get people to leave their money behind, not a seduction for locals to feed the beast. Even explicit gambling advertising toward locals showed restraint in the years after 1931, and followed federal standards that legally embodied the philosophy of protecting the "health, safety, and welfare of its citizens" by minimizing the ill effects that gambling could cultivate in local communities. There was also a limitation on the number of racebooks (one for every 12,500 people in population).

Likewise in the cities of Reno and Las Vegas, major casino style gambling was limited for decades to a few designated blocks of “red-line zones.” Reno abandoned this concept by 1963, but Las Vegas held on much longer arguing that while locals could obviously gamble wherever they wanted, the tourist destinations of the Strip and Fremont Street should carry the weight.

It was also an issue of managed and smart growth popular at the time. But holding out could only last so long, and right around the time the Corporate Gaming Act of 1967 allowed outside companies to enter the market, red-line zones faded. In the mid-1970s, Bob Stupak was granted a license for what is now known as the Stratosphere, and Frank Fertitta Jr. opened up what is now the Palace Station. A new phenomenon had hit — the locals casino.

Arguably, that’s when local residents became a target and the conversations around gambling started to swing toward less dynamic. Yet, the important issues around gambling, and especially locals gambling, never did get fully resolved. For instance, the exact percentage of gambling revenues derived from locals who gamble is something ascertainable but rarely sought out for quantification, though it’s safe to say it’s not insignificant. In fact, the first three months of the COVID pandemic saw travel to Las Vegas essentially halted, and from July 2020 to December 2020, when tourists were continuing to stay away, casinos still won $4.6 billion. And while that was down 24 percent from the prior year, it’s still $4.6 billion. It’s not hard to speculate who was shelling it out. 

Which brings us back to this wildly unnuanced discussion about the lottery.

Gambling-related social costs

For whatever reason the Culinary Union seems to have been the impetus for this surge of effort to get a lottery to Nevada, framing it as the best (and only) solution for the mounting challenges of teenage mental health? And while, again, this is less about the lottery and mostly about how we talk about gambling in 2023, it is curious that lottery is being brought up in this context. 

First, the Culinary Union surely knows we already have lots of gambling in virtually every other form? Second, there is both a significant lack of mental health infrastructure and a bevy of legislative barriers to increased mental health treatment that new cash won’t even begin to solve. Third, the lottery law doesn’t even mention mental health treatment, let alone earmark it for such spending. Finally, the lottery is basically a cannibalistic effort to get locals to lose money so that some of that money funds services for social ills, some of which are clearly related to … a new lottery. If Culinary really wanted what it said it did, this lottery push seems as ineffective a measure as any could be.

On the other side of the equation, the established gaming industry predictably showed up to oppose a lottery but was dismissed as protectionists. And when they tried to sound the alarm (as subtly as they did lest their own shortcomings when it comes to problem gambling being explored), they were derided. One commentator from an allegedly progressive group bandied opposing a lottery in Nevada because it encourages gambling habits among vulnerable communities, but it seems like a ship that's sailed. 

What a curious point in our own history where gambling has become so ubiquitous and unexamined that even the progressives and unions are like “Yeah so what, we grab revenue from the poorest people in the community with a new-to-us, shittier form of gambling.”

But whether for fun, a profession or out of addiction, gambling is, at its core about risk, and likely, losing money. And while statistically way more folks can handle gambling than those who can’t, recent data suggests that adults in Nevada are far more likely than the national average to have or develop problem gambling disorders. While prevalence studies are few and far between, a very recent analysis by the International Gaming Institute at UNLV (to be released June 30) found that 19.7 percent of Nevadans who have gambled in the past year have high risk of developing problem gambling and gambling addiction. Compare that statistic to the commonly accepted national average amongst adults that 1 percent to 2 percent will experience a serious gambling disorder in their lifetime.

Also, devoting money to people (including teens) for problem gambling treatment and prevention is not a major priority for Nevada. We’re barely middle of the pack in public spending on it.  

So why should we care about the personal decision of people to risk money at gambling, which again, can be so fun if done in moderation (if we can figure out what moderation even means)? Well, problem gambling has obvious impacts on financial stability and is a commonly seen element of all sorts of things: domestic violence, homelessness, food insecurity, health concerns, criminality — not just for the gambler but for their families, too. How big a problem is that in Nevada? Also, how much revenue is derived from gamblers with significant mental health deficits?

Honestly, who knows? We don’t ask. We don’t know how to talk about gambling anymore or its holistic and real costs. Why would we when gambling means so much to our state? Without gambling, Las Vegas is basically St. George, Utah, with fine dining.

So does Las Vegas need to cut open a new stream of local-derived revenue from our own veins? Is Nevada somehow losing outrageous sums, as some have pointed out, to the long lines on the other side of the border from Primm when mega-Lotto fever hits? 

Gambling is our lifeblood, but it is not perfect. It’s flawed well beyond what we care to admit. And while we own it and need it, we can’t continue to pretend it’s uncomplicated. With no economic analysis or a single study considered before passing a lottery or any other new gambling scheme, it’s problematic. Even that long line at the border argument is obviously inadequate once you realize those lines are only sporadic and tied to monster multistate events. There aren’t such lines for the ubiquitous “scratchers” that will literally litter our poorest neighborhoods with a legal lottery. And even when megalines form, the proceeds are split up amongst the states that participate. 

Too many decisions here seem to be all gut and emotion, no logic and fact. Which, come to think about it — is gambling in a nutshell for better and worse.

Dayvid Figler is a criminal defense attorney based in Las Vegas. He previously served as an associate attorney for the Clark County Special Public Defender’s office representing indigent defendants charged with murder, as well as briefly serving as a Las Vegas Municipal Court judge. Figler has been cited by the New York Times, National Public Radio, Newsweek, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, among others. His award-winning radio essays have appeared on KNPR as well as on NPR’s All Things Considered program.