It is a sad day when Oklahoma's public policy is designed to take advantage of human weakness.

[Below please find an editorial piece by state Rep. Paul Wesselhöft, R-Moore, on the sale of tickets for the Oklahoma state lottery, set to begin this week. As the excitement surrounding ticket sales revs up, Rep. Wesselhöft hopes this editorial will present Oklahomans with the other side of the issue.]

Snake Eyes
By State Rep. Paul Wesselhöft

Dice have been found in Egypt dating thousands of years before Christ. Gambling, it seems, has been a universal practice. Gambling involves gain to very few and loss to a great many. Winners are made at the often serious expense of losers. Wouldn't it seem that the command to love one's neighbor rules out gain at your neighbor's inevitable loss?

Now that Oklahoma has initiated a public policy to extract wealth from her citizens through a lottery, the state has become a partner in a business that breaks up families and exploits our most vulnerable citizens. It is a sad day when Oklahoma's public policy is designed to take advantage of human weakness.

With lottery tickets soon to be available at the corner store, and with currently over 80 casinos within a short drive, gambling in Oklahoma is easy to find - and very addictive. Families often suffer severely at the hands of the addictive gambler. Not every gambler develops a pathological behavior pattern, but far too many do.

State officials estimate that some 127,000 Oklahomans are either pathological or problem gamblers. Our state's economy is already bearing the loss of $50 million in gambling-related bankruptcies. Both of these numbers will surely increase as the lottery takes hold.

And though "casual" gambling seldom causes serious problems and should not be considered in the same category as "compulsive" gambling, one must be cautious. All compulsive gambling begins casually.

In my years of pastoral counseling in military communities, where slot machines tend to be plentiful, I have too often seen the social, professional, familial and economic devastation that gambling causes. It ruins lives, and often destroys them altogether. State officials estimate the suicide rate among problem gamblers at 20 percent.

Gambling creates no real product. It creates no new wealth. Gambling violates the principle of fair return for labor and investment and the ethics of stewardship and hard work. It also inflicts pain disproportionately on the poor. And Oklahoma is already one of the poorest states in the nation.

Despite what the governor claims, Oklahoma's economy simply cannot grow when her citizens repeatedly lose capital by gambling away their hard-earned wages. That's a fact. Over the long run, the only people who grow wealthy because of gambling are those who control the process - the casinos, many of which are owned by out-of-state syndicates; and, of course, those who operate the lotteries.

Lottery proponents justify their actions by claiming that it's for the children. Haven't we heard that before? If public policy makers want money for the kids, let them be courageous enough to ask for it legitimately.

There are only so many gambling dollars available in this state. And with the proliferation of casinos and now the lottery, one might wonder if all this competition for everyone's income will someday create an implosion of Oklahoma's gambling industry. If that happens, what are the public policy makers to do with their grand scheme?

When governments sponsor and sanction gambling, even through the democratic process, they engage in the worst type of commercial exploitation. We need government to encourage productive labor, not entice her citizens, through seductive advertising, to crave unearned wealth by tickets bought, the roll of dice, or the pull of the "one-armed bandit."

Albert Einstein stated that "God Almighty does not throw dice." He was referring to the fact that the universe is ordered and not left to chance. State-legalized gambling, it seems, is a denial of faith in God and His ordered universe. The gambler places their trust and devotion in blind chance, which is the antithesis of an ordered universe governed by a sovereign God.

To compulsively place one's trust in mere chance, for the Judeo-Christian, is akin to idolatry; for the atheist and others, let's just call it, "snake eyes."

[Wesselhöft, R-Moore, represents District 54 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives.]  ¶ 7:01 AM