Last November, Ohio voters rejected the Learn and Earn Casino Proposal, also known as Issue 3, by a seven percent margin. This proposal was an attempt to amend the Ohio Constitution, which has prohibited legalized gambling since 1850. Issue 3 stated that some of the revenue made by these casinos would help the children of our great state receive a better and more comfortable education.
I’m not stupid. I realize that these promises made by these businessmen may not hold true. These promises may turn out to be a shallow attempt to get their way and make their money, but this is not the point. The point is that the United States is a free country and gambling should be allowed. Everyone should be able to spend their hard-earned money as they please. The government is not the people’s financial advisors, and they should keep their noses out of how their citizens spend their personal money. Long, hard hours of work should give a citizen of a free country the right to spend their money on whatever they please.
Some are worried that casinos will bring deviance with their arrivals. These folks think their cities will see an increase of inebriation and prostitution. Just because a city sports one casino does not mean that particular city will ride down a slippery slope towards becoming a city of sin.
Some people like to get together with their friends and play cards with new faces. People seek a kind of excitement that is fulfilled by competing with people they have never seen before. I believe this is caused by anticipation and the curiosity of how talented they really are. Casinos give people this kind of harmless fun.
What about the hundreds of thousands of lives that gambling additions will destroy because of these casinos? This is the question that the skeptics of this proposal are constantly raising. It is not the casino’s fault that some people cannot control how they spend their money. This assumption that casinos cause addictions is unfair. It is unfair to the recreational gambler that the compulsive gambler cannot control his filthy habit.
These corporations may be trying to make a profit off their customers, but is that not what every business in America is trying to do. How is letting compulsive gamblers gamble their money away in a casino any different than letting an alcoholic squander their life savings on drinks at a local bar? Or any different than perverts spending their whole paychecks on lap dances in strip clubs?
The opening of casinos could also bring many more jobs to Ohio. These casinos would need bartenders, dealers, security, people to cash out chips, and many other jobs. Neil S. Clark, a lobbyist that supported Issue 3, preached that the constitutional amendment supporting casinos would create 56,000 jobs in Ohio. Such a large amount of new jobs could substantially boost our state’s economy.
According to the Ohio Roundtable website, casinos will doom at least 109,000 Ohioans and their families to problem and pathological gambling addictions. Do people have that little of faith in their fellow human being or are skeptics just throwing around numbers to scare the fickle? Every man and woman has the right to spend their money the way they please, whether that be at a restaurant, bar, or casino.
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