Licensed retailers throughout New York State sell official lottery games, including scratch-off tickets.
A lottery is a game of chance or a method of allocating prizes based on chance, as opposed to skill, in which numbered tickets are sold and the winner is selected by drawing or casting lots. The word also has acquired a more general meaning of chance, luck, and happenstance.
Lotteries emerged from a period of exigency in early America, when public goods were desperately needed but states had no appetite for raising taxes. For politicians, says Cohen, the lottery offered a “budgetary miracle”: an easy way to balance state budgets without having to raise taxes or cut services, both of which would be unpopular with voters.
As a result, the evolution of state lotteries is a classic example of policy being made piecemeal and incrementally, with very little general overview or input. The authority that oversees the operations of the lottery is split between executive and legislative branches and further divided within each, with the result that few, if any, states have a coherent “gambling policy” or even a lottery policy.
The result, in part, has been that lottery officials are often lightening rods for criticism, with complaints focusing on everything from the prevalence of compulsive gambling to alleged regressive impacts on low-income neighborhoods. But, as Cohen notes, these are not just reactions to, but drivers of, the continuing evolution of the industry. The introduction of new games is essential to maintaining or increasing revenues, and the introduction of super-sized jackpots provides an opportunity for free publicity on newscasts and web sites.