5. Gambling victimizes the poor. The poorest citizens spend the largest percentage of their incomes on gambling. Those who can afford it the least gamble the most. Both public and private gambling businesses target adver-tising directly at the weakest individuals in society because they are gambling's best customers.
6. Gambling presents a bad example to our children. Gambling promotes the idea that luck, rather than education and hard work, is the key to success. Gambling produces no wealth for society, and suggests that productivity is not important. Gambling sets up artificial risks and glorifies individuals who take the biggest, most foolish chances.
7. Gambling corrupts government. So much money is at stake, and gambling companies are so dependent on governmental decisions for a piece of those profits, that corruption is inevitable. Wherever gambling has gone, bribery, extortion and payoffs have followed.
These reasons, although rooted in the US' situation, are all equally relevant to Taiwan and should be heeded by those considering legalizing gambling.
I never like to criticize a plan without offering an alternative. The government should forget gambling. What Taiwan should do to really jump-start the economy is to turn the entire nation into one huge drug lab; refining opium into heroin, cocoa leaves into cocaine and Red Devil lye into speed. That is where the big money is.
Some might say that such a plan would make Taiwan an international outcast. My reply to that is: Taiwan is already an international outcast, so we might as well be a rich one.
Let me quickly note, the foregoing was said as satire. I don't want some literal-minded official to think that I am advising that Taiwan be turned into a floating drug lab. That is not a solution to Taiwan's economic woes. Neither is legalized gambling.
Brian Kennedy is an attorney who writes and teaches on criminal justice and human rights issues.
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