Costs of gambling
The hidden and intangible costs of lottery gambling
Lottery gambling leads to problems that carry great costs, not only to gamblers and their families but to society. Because these problems are, for the most part, of a behavioral and social nature, treatment is often provided by government services and agencies.
No science can accurately and fairly assign a cause and effect relationship to the problems arising from lottery gambling. If that were possible, the costs associated with the treatment of those problems could be factored in to any evaluation of lottery public policy and weighed against lotteries' alleged benefits.
That is also why the dollar costs arising from lottery gambling problems are never included under the Expenses column on a lottery commission’s annual income statement.
It is the contention of LottoStocks that if the hidden and intangible costs of lottery gambling could be quantified and included as part of lottery operations, there would be no lottery commission in the United States that would show a profit. Indeed, we suggest that the loss would be exponentially greater than any revenue legalized lottery gambling could ever hope to generate.
Costs of gambling
The following are just some of the hidden and intangible costs of lottery gambling: