Hamilton, Casinos and Lotteries Redux

In a recent post about Hamilton's potential casino and its possible effects on Hamilton's poor I bantered the idea of trying to reduce lottery use amongst Hamilton's poorest citizens. There's an interesting CBC Hamilton article about Brantford's experience with their casino. I found these paragraphs interesting:

"The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction wants to be sure. The roundtable is figuring out where it stands on the casino issue, Cooper said. In doing so, it commissioned a study by local researcher Sarah Wayland.
Wayland's study found that while low-income residents don't gamble as often as medium and high-income households, they spend a disproportionately higher percentage of their income on gambling, Cooper said.
“It also showed the closer someone lives to a casino, the greater chance of someone going to a casino, so that would obviously have an impact for residents in the downtown core,” he said.
Studies have found that low-income populations are more likely to buy a lottery ticket or play bingo. But those who go to casinos “spend a lot of money,” Wayland said."

So lotteries are more likely played by those with low incomes. That's not surprising, considering casinos aren't as ubiquitous as convenience stores selling lottery tickets, plus the minimums are often lower. Ameliorating money issues for those with low income would be best addressed by addressing lotteries. I don't think that casinos are a great thing for low income people, but since lotteries already exist, why not try and do something about them anyways?

Low Income Hamiltonians and Lotteries

With concern that a new casino located in downtown Hamilton would harm low income Hamiltonians, I wonder about forms of gambling already available. Places selling various forms of lottery tickets from scratch tickets to 6/49 are ubiquitous in the lower city. How much of this buying is done by those in poverty? Could we start an education program warning the poor to stop throwing their money away on lottery tickets? Is there any program that could work, or is it fruitless?

I wouldn't mind seeing some data on what is spent by Hamiltonians of all levels on lotteries. I might take a deeper look into what stats are available online. Certainly decreasing spending on lotteries (and tobacco for that matter) frees up money for more worth causes.

Also why don't more people care about this issue?