A new ad from the state lottery urges problem gamblers to get help.
The spot features animations depicting lottery, card and slot games. Lottery Executive Director Tom Shaheen provides the voice over.
"It can be a lot of fun, but when you play too often the fun can quickly fade," Shaheen says. The ad concludes by encouraging anyone who is playing too much to call the problem gambling help line at 877-718-5543.
The ad is the only one the lottery is running this week, which is National Problem Gambling Awareness Week, said Pam Walker, a spokeswoman for the lottery. The spot costs $21,465 to produce. It replaces last year's spot in which Shaheen used hot sauce as a metaphor for problem gambling.
In 2009, the help line received more than 7,132 calls in 2009, according to a report released to Dome by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. Of those, 576 were reporting problem gambling.
Of those, 45 percent (260) called after seeing the number on the back of a lottery ticket and 186 or 43 percent said their primary problem activity was the lottery. Video poker and slot machines were the second and third, respectively, most cited problem activities.
Document(s):
2009 North Carolina Report.pdf
Comments
A tax
March 10, 2010 - 6:14pm — Hot_E_lib_girlLotteries are a tax on those who SUCK at math.
What would you say if the headline was "Coke Dealers warn of Addiction!"?
The lottery wants people to
March 10, 2010 - 5:22am — meltedThe lottery wants people to gamble and now is trying to back up and give themselves a good image by telling people to gamble with a sense of responsibility. There has never been a good image for the lottery since it was created. One of its biggest backers, Jim Black, was sent to prison and state citizens as a whole have never totally embraced this because we knew it would be fiasco from the beginning. The state money spent on the administration of the lottery is outrageous. The general assembly does deserve some sense of redemption by at last taking the word education out of the lottery name because education has never been the big winner of the lottery it was touted to be. In the last couple of years Sleasy Easley was in office he took money from the lottery that was to go to schools and spent it on other things. It is my understanding this money has been paid back to the schools but the question is why was it taken from its intended source in the first place if lottery revenue was to go to schools? That question was cleared up when the general assembly formally opened the fund to be spent on any state expense by taking the word education out of its name. The larger issue here is that the majority of people did not want the lottery to begin with and are not playing it. All sorts of tactics have been used to induce people to play and now the image is of a gamblers haven. The sooner the state does away with this albatross the better. The money it will save on administrative costs can be used for worthwhile state projects - like balancing the budget without raising taxes on citizens.
This is funny if it was not
March 9, 2010 - 5:41pm — ashaw80This is funny if it was not so sad. There is no such thing as a gambling problem. The problem is losing!!!! Of course the State runs a game that guarantees them a profit. What does that mean? The suckers that play are guaranteed that they will lose.
Games like Craps, blackjack, sports betting and poker that actually have much lower negative expectation (house share) are against the law.
Put someone in the middle of this who is from a logical place in our universe and try to explain that to them.