Gambling proponents this week offered a wacky new argument to advance their cause and thwart the repeated will of Florida voters: Legalize gambling and tax the profits to help the elderly and children.
While they’re at it, why not sanction a neighborhood heroin stand? There’s plenty of untaxed profit in illicit drug sales, too.
That lawmakers would even consider expanding gambling options in the state simply defies reason. Plenty of information, anecdotal and otherwise, demonstrates the long-term financial and social consequences of gambling upon host communities. Increased drug abuse, bankruptcies, divorce, addiction, organized crime, low-wage jobs — the list goes on and on.
Yet gambling lobbyists had the audacity to tell lawmakers this week that continued resistance to gambling inroads in Florida would rob the poor children and frail elderly of needed services. Please.
How does that fit into the family values mantra promoted by the ruling Republican Party in Florida?
There are plenty of other solutions — both long and short-term — to provide vital government services. Why not join other states to more aggressively collect sales tax on Internet purchases? Or revisit billions of dollars worth of tax cuts that lawmakers awarded in the past few years, when times were flush? Or adopt just a few of the recent suggestions by two government watchdog groups that identified $12.3 billion in potential savings?
Lawmakers no sooner should consider legalizing illicit drugs than they should spin the Roulette wheel with Florida’s future.
