Massachusetts is in danger of becoming addicted to gambling as a means of solving its budgetary woes, warn some of the state's religious leaders.
"This state is on a slippery slope of increased dependence on gambling revenues, and we are careening downward with increasing recklessness," 16 Protestant and Orthodox leaders said in a statement released by the Massachusetts Council of Churches.The state has a lottery and is considering off-track betting, video poker and casino gambling.
The Rev. Bennie E. Whiten Jr. of the United Church of Christ, one of the 16 clergy who signed the statement, said church leaders also are concerned that more legalized gambling will hit disproportionately the poor and the working class and that the risk of compulsive gambling will increase, especially as gambling is mixed with the serving of alcoholic beverages.
Virginia Buckingham, a spokesman for Gov. William F. Weld, said the administration is simply responding to competitive pressures from other states in supporting some expansion of gambling.