Gambling is back in the headlines. The North Carolina legislature is considering a bill that would ban video poker.  Sorry guys, that horse is out of the
barn. When then Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue cast the deciding vote in 2005 to enact the state lottery, North
Carolina was in the gambling business. And it?s been controversial since then. But once North Carolina was in the gambling business, the door was opened.

Tom Campbell had an insightful piece in NCSpin.com in September 2009:

I make no apology for opposing legalized gambling. It is lousy public policy, an ineffective way to raise tax revenues, morally wrong, and preys on people who can ill afford it. But I uphold your right to spend your cash any way you want, even though your chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize are greater than winning the Powerball jackpot.
Then there?s our state?s lottery. Our state has lost whatever moral high ground we had. We are principals in the gambling game?.

We?re stuck with gambling and our only choice is to regulate and tax the games to ensure the minimization of crime and the maximization of benefit to our citizens. We must charge stiff fees to license machines and hefty penalties for those found unlicensed, using those fees to pay for enforcement and addiction counseling. Then we must tax the revenues to take pressure off our beleaguered state budget. These are the safest bets to deal with North Carolina?s gambling problem.

Once the state run lottery was underway, other forms of gambling soon followed, including video poker.  John Hood wrote in May 2006:


I think that the most important reason not to ban video poker is that it would reduce individual freedom.

If living in a free society means that I have only the right to spend my time and money in wise and moral ways, then it doesn?t mean much at all. Freedom must mean the freedom to be foolish and immoral, too. Most gambling, particularly when there is no skill involved and one is betting on sheer luck, is either a silly frivolity or, for some, the gateway to a life of debt and frustration. North Carolinians have every right to engage in it, nevertheless.

Does opposing a video-poker ban make me a creature of the video-poker industry? No, of course not. I have no personal or financial relationship with them. I?ve never played any of the games myself.

The same principle that leads one to oppose government prohibition of video poker, that it is a voluntary transaction from which jobs and revenues derive, should lead one to oppose other government interventions based on paternalistic grounds?

Hood goes on to talk about the government mandated minimum wage and mandated benefits on health insurance. I would add last year?s smoking ban and the current debate on childhood obesity as two additional examples of North Carolina?s nanny state mentality.  You can?t legislate good sense or wisdom. Nor should you. Free people are free to make choices, no matter if those choices are good, bad and indifferent.

As the General Assembly reconsiders banning video poker, they need to remember that they have already legalized gambling.  It is hypocritical to endorse (and heavily promote) buying lottery tickets while trying to outlaw other forms of gambling. Government can?t create a monopoly for itself once it decided to get into the gambling business.
   

The bottom line is freedom means making choices, even if those choices are not always good, healthy or safe ones.  And those choices are ours to make, ours to stand by and ours to assume responsibility for.  They are none of government?s business.

North Carolina decided some time ago that gambling was okay. If the state lottery is okay, then video poker, and other forms of gambling have to be okay too.  Regulate it, tax it like any other legal business and live with it.