Gambling under attack in Alaska

 Americans love to gamble, it might be a football pool, a friendly poker game, or playing the ponies. Many not for profit organizations raise money by sponsoring bingo, holding raffles, or having a Monte Carlo night.

Here in Alaska the most popular forms of gambling are native sponsored bingo and “pull-tabs” known where I came from as “instant bingo”. Up here it is also referred to as “Alaska indoor sports”. We have the occasional raffle and the “Nenana Ice Classic” where we bet on when the ice will break up in Nenana, a railroad town where surveyors wintered in 1917 and started the betting pool.

Aside from that there is very little organized gambling in Alaska, no lottery, no casinos, no horse race tracks, and no Monte Carlo nights in the church basement.

So why do Harry Crawford, D-Anchorage and Nancy Dahlstrom R-Eagle River think we need a constitutional amendment to ban “for profit gambling”, bit of overkill if you ask the Perspective. Since the amendment has very little chance of actually passing, is this political posturing to curry favor with anti-gambling nabobs?

What we need is more gambling, or at least some variety, so that our non-profits can fill their coffers and continue to provide their services. The Perspective is not calling for building casinos, but the odd Monte Carlo night would be a pleasant diversion, (and a chance to pick up so dough-re-mi in the process).
 
The Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant and Retailers Association of Alaska (CHARR) opposes the measure. “The Alaska Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, is a sacred document that was not meant to be a tool for any one group, anyone's group, to force morality upon the general public.”
The Perspective concurs.