VACUUM CLEANER GAMES

There are not too many predictions worth betting the farm on, but here are a few: with the proposal of a casino in Oxford County going before voters in November, it’s no gamble to say that the coffers of local TV stations with swell with advertising revenues from checks bearing the CasinosNO! endorsement; proponents will promise that if approved, the casino will pay for new roads and schools and a lobster in every pot, and opponents will counter that burglaries, theft, murder and mayhem will rise; and by Election Day, Mainers will be sick to death of the whole debate.

To date, Maine voters have not been kind to casinos or racinos; the vote that authorized Hollywood Slots in Bangor slipped through while attention was focused on a larger proposal for southern Maine, CasinosNO! maintains. Yet Mainers are not inherently opposed to the idea of gambling; check out the parking lot at the temporary home of Hollywood Slots; even on a weekday morning in mid-winter, it’s full. Or loiter at the counter of a convenience store and watch how many people buy the state’s lottery tickets in $10 and $20 increments.

The Oxford County proposal, like others before it, would package slot machines and table games played around the clock in windowless rooms with a wilderness lodge-like resort. The backers believe the same folks who gamble will enjoy snowmobiling, hiking and fishing, and they’re probably right. Gambling is not mutually exclusive with more traditional Maine recreation.

And that’s what gambling is best understood as: recreation, or at least entertainment. Just as going to a bar to drink a $5 beer, when the same brew could be enjoyed at home for $1.75 is not economically justifiable, gambling – essentially stuffing money into a vacuum cleaner, waiting for it to occasionally backfire – can be fun.

The Oxford County proposal could win voter approval where others have fallen short, if only because its promise to send money to state coffers comes in the midst of an economic downturn. Or it may, like the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s Washington County proposal, be seen as a pet project not providing much for the rest of the state’s residents.

The casino proposal begs some important questions, which have been considered before, such as: how much gambling do people need before they are sated? Is gambling a tax dressed up in party clothes? Should government protect people from themselves and their willingness to risk money in hand for the chance at more money? And finally, without a casino, is Maine missing a key card in its economic development hand, or is the state sitting pretty as “the way life should be,” not the way it is elsewhere?

Over the next six months, these and other questions will be debated earnestly and vigorously. Don’t expect any easy answers.