Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

After years of lobbying, West Virginia racetracks soon may be able offer
table games to their patrons. Meanwhile, West Virginia's state-sanctioned
mini-casinos -- the ones that offer video games on neighborhood street
corners across the state -- apparently will continue to extract cash from
the pockets of those who can least afford to lose it. And so it goes in West
Virginia. The Legislature now appears to understand that competition in
neighboring states soon will undermine revenues at West Virginia's
destination racetracks, whose managers say they need table games to preserve
their business. Those tracks tend to be segregated from the public and
depend largely on out-of-state clientele who can at least afford to travel
to gamble. But lawmakers who are considering table games legislation
apparently aren't interested in eliminating one obvious problem in exchange
for passing table games legislation. If we are destined to rely on gambling
revenue, shouldn't we at least depend on the least offensive forms of
gambling? Is state government so desperate for money that it must squeeze
every nickel we can out of gambling? It makes sense to approve table game
legislation and, at the same time, eliminate an obvious problem -- the
neighborhood gambling parlors that create myriad social problems and
associated costs.