Friendship
...engaged in internet betting and paying out huge sums of money to the cashiers. The amazing thing was-for every one person who left, two came in.
Mr. Chairman, Fellow Toastmasters & Guests
In recent times, the issue of gambling and the lottery have heated up in The Bahamas. Some propose it as a means to fund our ailing public school system, to generate funding for sports and to generate needed revenue for the government. Yes a national lottery would make lot of money, but how would you feel if your home was hurt as a result?
Any way you roll the dice, gambling is a bad bet.
I'm totally opposed to the lottery and gambling in general. There are numerous reasons to reject its implementation here in the Bahamas, of which I am only going to scratch the surface with 4 points.
Firstly, Gambling is a bad bet statistically.
What are the odds of you can even winning in a lottery? Most Bahamians gamble in some form but 95% of them lose more than they bet. Winners get back less than half of what they bet. No one in his or her right mind should invest in anything with such a loss record. Statistics show that a person is seven times more likely to be hit by lightning than to win a typical National lottery! The typical odds against winning a national lottery are five to ten million to one. In other words, you would have to buy fifty lottery tickets every week to win on the average once in every 5000 years. In short, the chances of winning the lottery are about the same if you don't play!
Gambling advertisements portrayed the activity as a harmless recreation, but news reports give a grim account of gambling's ill effects:
An Iowa teenager, despondent over blackjack gambling debts, killed himself.
A church secretary in Minnesota stole $186,000 from the church to finance her casino and lottery obsession.
A 73-year-old retired Colorado man gambled away his entire...
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