Gambling in Alabama and lessons to learn from extinct dry counties: Op-ed

This is a guest opinion column

I was born in a dry county in Alabama. No one is born in dry counties in Alabama today, because there aren’t any. While there are some counties that are technically dry, they all have “wet” municipalities in their borders. In Alabama, the dry county is extinct, gone the way of the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon.

Dry counties went extinct because the tide of history was against them. And regardless of how you feel about gambling, Alabama’s odd position as the only non-Mormon state in the continental United States without either a lottery and/or full casino gaming cannot last forever.

And it shouldn’t.

I understand the arguments of gambling prohibitionists. I don’t gamble myself. I don’t think it is the best way to raise state revenue. It tends to prey on the poorest in society. There is a large social cost.

All of that is moot.

Gambling is here. It is all around us and it is IN ALABAMA, even though – in 2024 – elected officials will tell you that they are “against legalizing gambling in Alabama.”

It has been legal for over 50 years. Ever since the first dog track opened in Mobile. And the laws allowing racetracks in Alabama eventually made Native American gaming both legal and unstoppable in Alabama.

Today, there are three full-fledged Poarch Creek Indian tribal casinos operating (with enormous success) in Alabama. The PCI have a monopoly on pretty much every desirable casino operation due in relatively equal parts to 1) the refusal of Alabama leaders to deal in reality; 2) the effective 25-year lobbying and propaganda efforts of Mississippi and Las Vegas based gambling entities to protect THEIR economic interests at Alabama’s expense; and 3) the hundreds of thousands of dollars contributed to the Alabama Republican Party (through the Republican State Leadership Committee to disguise its origin to the state GOP, which had pledged to NOT accept casino-related contributions) that made the PCI the top donor to the party in the crucial 2010 state elections that cemented the current leadership. And as bad an idea as it is to allow a sovereign alien nation inside the state to monopolize a highly lucrative business, Alabama’s bizarre current gambling laws (as interpreted by our own Alabama Supreme Court) have resulted in the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars in state taxpayer dollars to shut down the nontribal casinos – which, unlike their PCI counterparts, actually GENERATE state revenue.

This is an important point: in Alabama due to our current gambling laws (and our Alabama Supreme Court’s interpretation of those laws) we are literally shutting down state-revenue generating businesses to eliminate the competition of businesses in a foreign nation (the PCI tribal lands) and in other states that do NOT pay ANY taxes to Alabama. We are cutting our own revenue to hand it to others. On purpose. And we haven’t even talked about the jobs we are losing to surrounding states by supporting their industries – at our own clear expense.

And there is more bleeding of our state’s wealth across state lines. Every state around Alabama now has a lottery creating hundreds of millions in revenue. And every one of those states fervently hopes that Alabama does not get one. Which – if we are paying attention in Alabama – should settle any argument about whether we should have one. Because those other states get our money. Lots of it.

They – Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and now Tennessee – get our money. But since we have reduced (not nonexistent) gambling operations in Alabama, we don’t pay the social costs – increased gambling addictions, increased crime, corruption – those “gambling states” do – right?

Wrong.

Gambling prohibitionists usually dig their final line of defense on the societal ills associated with gambling. And those evils are real. However, those ills – like gambling itself – are already here in Alabama.

That’s why examining alcohol issues in dry counties can be enlightening for Alabama and its future. Alabama is a kind of “semi-dry state” for gambling. Gambling opponents maintain that by keeping casinos in Mississippi and on tribal land and by eschewing a lottery, Alabama will have fewer problem gamblers and less “binge gambling.” The theory is that by making the vice harder to obtain (although obviously only somewhat harder to obtain) you will reduce the negative impacts to the community.

But that is NOT what has proven true – over decades of experience – in dry counties with alcohol.

A study conducted here in Alabama found that binge drinking was higher on average in dry counties than in wet counties. And in an even more shocking study, a five-year Texas study found that the alcohol related traffic fatalities in its dry counties were at a rate of 6.8 per 10,000 people -but only 1.9 per 10,000 people in their wet counties.

These studies suggest that making it difficult – but not that difficult – for an addictive personality to pursue his addictive behavior can be the worst possible scenario. In Mississippi, a gambling addict has easier access to his chosen vice. But in Alabama, the addict still – with slightly more effort – can and will engage in the exact same destructive behavior – and the addict will waste even more time and money and will be even more dangerous to himself and his family to do it. In practice, just like the alcohol abuser in the dry county is even more destructive than in a wet county.

It is inevitable that gambling will expand in Alabama. Inevitable. We no longer have the ability to make that choice. The decision has been made for us – to a large degree – by gambling expansion in surrounding states, by changing mores, and even by recent technology. What we CAN do is MANAGE and REGULATE gambling to make sure that the state actually GETS the hundreds of billions in available revenue surrounding states have been pocketing for decades.

There are voices in the current conversation about gaming that insist Alabama has more critical issues. They insist gambling reform can wait. Those voices come from outside the room, and generally from outside of Alabama. Thanks to the congressional investigation into the Abramoff case (the scandal involving corruption centering on a tribal lobbyist for the Mississippi Choctaw casinos) we have a proven record of Mississippi casinos actively funding “anti-gambling” groups such as the Alabama Policy Institute (formerly the Alabama Family Alliance, which was its name when, according to congressional testimony, it received money from the Mississippi casinos to oppose the 1999 lottery proposal in Alabama). It is likely those same groups will fight for Mississippi again.

Let’s fight – this time – for Alabama. Alabama voices have to be the ones we listen to – and hear.

Tim Whitt has worked in governmental relations in Alabama and across the country for the last three decades. He wrote this for al.com.