As more and more states are becoming dependent on gambling revenue, we are opening the doors to novice gamblers and increasing the potential for existing gamblers to cross the line into illegal activities. Those who have never gambled before, or never engaged in any criminal activity are susceptible to the lure of gambling's promise of instant riches and escape from loneliness, stress, and boredom.

Gambling like any other addiction is overpowering, it can and will drive you to insanity. If you have not succumbed to insanity it just might cause you to consider committing a crime to obtain finances so you may continue with your addiction to gamble; thus leading you closer to the gates of prison or worse yet death. I came much to close to getting arrested for a felony like a few of my sisters. I have tried and failed at committing suicide on three different occasions. There are those brothers and sisters in the fellowship who have succeeded at suicide. You just might go so far as to embezzle funds from your employer. There are those sisters who have spent time incarcerated for their crimes, and yet others are still in prison. A quote taken from my Gamblers Anonymous handbook states: The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of prison, insanity or death. My choice was life over death, sanity over insanity, and the thought of prison scares me. My life free from gambling, the love of God and family is far more important to me to ignore. After seven plus years of frenzied, uncontrollable, insanity I have turned my life over to my Higher Power, my God, Jesus Christ. He has helped me through all my adversity, above all else He has restored my love for Him and family. Gambling is described as one of the most baffling and insidious addictions that can never be cured but it can most definitely be arrested through diligent, hard work in the Gamblers Anonymous Program. Two words in my vocabulary, baffling and insidious remind me what gambling will do to you. The word baffle in my dictionary is described as: frustrate, thwart, foil, and perplex. The meaning of the word insidious enthralls me the most: ambush, sly, treacherous, seductive and the meaning that tears at my heart the most, is having a gradual and cumulative effect: subtle. As the snake slithers through the grass seeking its prey for food, so does gambler seek funds to feed their addiction to gamble. Unfortunately, the gamblers addiction is a slow subtle and treacherous deterioration unbeknownst especially to the gambler herself. Gambling will perplex you, it will frustrate you and above all it will thwart every emotion you possess. It will turn you into that slithering snake! You will become enthralled by anger, greed and hatred. You will destroy everything good in you. If you are suffering from a gambling addiction reach out for help through Gamblers Anonymous, grasp the program with all your might, and take it to heart for it may just save your life

Every day in the United States, people test their luck in numerous lotteries, from state-run games to massive programs like Powerball and Mega Millions. Yet few are aware that the origins of today’s lotteries can be found in an African American gambling economy that flourished in urban communities in the mid-twentieth century. In Running the Numbers, Matthew Vaz reveals how the politics of gambling became enmeshed in disputes over racial justice and police legitimacy. As Vaz highlights, early urban gamblers favored low-stakes games built around combinations of winning numbers. When these games became one of the largest economic engines in nonwhite areas like Harlem and Chicago’s south side, police took notice of the illegal business—and took advantage of new opportunities to benefit from graft and other corrupt practices. Eventually, governments found an unusual solution to the problems of illicit gambling and abusive police tactics: coopting the market through legal state-run lotteries, which could offer larger jackpots than any underground game. By tracing this process and the tensions and conflicts that propelled it, Vaz brilliantly calls attention to the fact that, much like education and housing in twentieth-century America, the gambling economy has also been a form of disputed terrain upon which racial power has been expressed, resisted, and reworked.