When it comes to dealing with the issue of gambling, North Carolina usually ends up playing a game of 52-card pickup. In other words, the state’s approach leads to little more than a bungled mess, offering neither logic nor conviction.
The latest debacle involves sweepstakes gaming, which has spread like kudzu across the Tar Heel State in recent years as a replacement to previously banned video poker. The sweepstakes industry has said that its form of video games offering prizes is legal because the winners are predetermined, and customers only purchase computer time that allows them to participate.
The state legislature in 2010 passed a law banning sweepstakes games, and the state Supreme Court recently upheld the constitutionality of that ban. The industry asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay enforcement while businesses pursued an appeal to the nation’s high court, but that request was denied.
Law-enforcement agencies across the state have begun enforcing the law, but with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
A potential loophole, which regulates how results can be displayed, may be enough to keep sweepstakes businesses that alter their machines in operation, at least in some jurisdictions.
Expect more court dates, more confusion, more inconsistent law enforcement — and the inevitable rise of new varieties of video-gaming enterprises as this legal whack-a-mole adventure continues.
New Gov. Pat McCrory has said he believes the law needs more work, and he plans to talk with legislative leaders about revisiting the issue of sweepstakes. Whether those discussions would extend to other forms of video gaming is not clear. But what the state really needs to examine is the way it has dealt with gambling in general, including what public interests are served by the current state of affairs.
By allowing — in fact, sponsoring — certain forms of gambling such as lottery and bingo parlors, the legislature seems to have taken sides on the morality issues.
So the central question remaining seems to be how gambling should be regulated and taxed. Current limitations do nothing to eliminate the possible abuses of gambling because it is already prevalent; instead, the state only seems to be limiting the revenue that could be raised through a well-regulated gambling industry. It is also preventing other sorely needed economic benefits — casino jobs, hotel construction, related entertainment forms — that could be derived.
Across the nation, states are realizing that prohibiting certain forms of gambling while allowing others is inconsistent in terms of morality and counter-productive in terms of raising revenues that could help close serious budget gaps. North Carolina needs to step up to the table.
