Skip to content

Is lotto a tax on the stupid?

TV commercials designed to entice people into spending more money on lottery tickets are immoral

Re: Letter to the editor in the Feb. 7 edition of The NEWS (‘Not A Good Question’).

Regardless of whether the taxpayers or the B.C. Lottery Corporation pay for the TV commercials that are designed to entice people into spending more money on lottery tickets, I feel that it’s just another sign of the moral decay that’s becoming more and more prevalent in governments.

Letter writer Bob Pain states: “it is the gamblers who are paying for advertising not the taxpayers.” A former finance minister of Italy stated that “lotteries are a tax on the stupid.” I don’t agree with that statement but can see his point that low income people and possibly elderly people suffering from dementia/Alzeihmer’s are more likely to spend a disproportionate percentage of their income on lottery tickets.

TV commercials that basically imply that the only way most people will ever be able to take that dream trip is to win the lottery are not only in bad taste but unethical and immoral, in my opinion.

James Paterson

Qualicum Beach