casinos which those people pushing for Bermuda to have casino gambling should read. Headed "A busted flush'' the article is sub-titled "How America's love affair with casino gambling turned to disillusionment''.

The article says America's love affair with casinos is essentially over, even though casino gambling is the most popular leisure activity in America. There are plenty of people still willing to roll dice, draw cards and, most of all, play slot machines. But there has been a change of heart among legislators who gave casino gambling legal sanction. Since mid-1994, the National Coalition Against Legalised Gambling has helped to defeat more than 30 state proposals to legalise or expand the gambling business. In August, 1996 President Bill Clinton signed a law establishing a commission whose nine members will study the impact of gambling on American society.

The Economist says legalised gambling has failed to provide the economic miracles that were promised for casino neighbourhoods. The jobs created are often menial and have been cancelled out by the jobs that are lost as casinos drive other older places of entertainment out of business.

Politicians who welcomed casinos because of their economic spin-offs have realised that dangers outweigh the spin-offs. Moreover, as other casinos have opened, the competition has diminished profitability. According to the article, many places failed to realise that casinos, more than other forms of gambling such as lotteries, cause what economists call "negative externalities''. There is a price to be paid for such things as law enforcement and the extra social services needed when gambling leads to the break-up of families.

The Economist says that when additional costs are taken into account, it is far from clear that casino gambling benefits anyone but the casino operators.

Casinos are a bad bet and are not a development tool. The Economist does not even get into the dangers of organised crime associated with casinos.

The basic argument in Bermuda has been that a central casino would provide visitors with something to do in the evening and provide Government with easy revenue for such things as education, health care and sport.

There have been suggestions that Bermuda could minimise the social dangers of gambling by restricting the casino to visitors. However, we find it hard to believe that Bermudians would accept being excluded from the casino.

For a long time now, this newspaper has opposed casino gambling for Bermuda but has advocated a lottery. We think the aim of supplying tax revenue for education, health care and sport could be achieved by a national lottery. We live in a country where people are allowed to gamble on all sorts of non-Bermudian operations from horses to other people's lotteries. It does not seem logical for money to go overseas so freely when the tax dollars could benefit Bermudians.