To the editor:

The news that the Kansas House has passed a bill authorizing state-owned casinos, with betting and slot machines at racetracks, is shocking and dismaying. Are there no bounds to what we are willing to sponsor in order to fill our state coffers?

Having spent three winters in Biloxi, Miss., where casinos abounded, I have a particular aversion to casino gambling, especially slot machines. Walking into a casino there, one first encounters shops selling expensive jewelry, furs, clothing and other luxury items. Entering the gambling area, one steps into a slot machine city where zombie-like citizens, many of them elderly, sit plugging one quarter after another into the machines.

Beyond the slots are the games such as cards, roulette and craps. Even the restaurants have video poker at the tables. Perhaps some of the gamblers will buy things in the luxury stores, but many end up in one of the numerous nearby pawn shops, hocking their watches.

Gambling can easily become an addiction, which leads to ruination just as do heroin and methamphetamines. The gambling addict’s family suffers the consequences in a myriad of ways. If our Legislature truly cares about the welfare of families in our state, how can they support this bill?

Shirley Domer,

Baldwin City