The following editorial appeared Tuesday in the Walla Walla Union Bulletin.

When state governments, including Washington’s and Oregon’s, got involved in state lotteries, the games of chance were pitched as a harmless way to make a little extra cash for schools.

Now, more than two decades later, we all know that’s nonsense. State lotteries have grown well beyond the original scratch ticket games. Today, state lotteries are on a par with Las Vegas casinos.

A little over a year ago Oregon’s lottery recently expanded into video slot machines that were put at 2,100 locations.

These new opportunities to gamble have apparently triggered gambling problems and spurred relapses.

“Anecdotally, we’ve seen more clients recently with (slot) line-game issues,” said Peter Walsh, director of programs for problem gamblers at Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare. “And we are starting to see relapses – people who had problems with video poker and addressed them are now having problems with (slot) games.”

Oh, but it’s apparently OK with state officials because the new games are bringing in a lot of cash. Oregon gamblers are now losing about $14 million a week – yes, a week – on the slot games, an increase of about 27 percent from a year ago, according to the Associated Press.

And the state has set aside some of the profit – five days’ worth, wow! – to help problem gamblers with their addiction. The state has allocated $9.3 million over two years to treat addicts. Gee, it even agreed to put the phone number for a problem-gambling helpline on its slot machines.

Does anybody really believe that’s going to curb this problem? If they do they’ve deluded themselves as a way to ease their guilt.

State lotteries are a tax – albeit a voluntary one. Even though it is voluntary, it is still an insidious, regressive tax. Generally, those who can least afford it spend a disproportionate amount of their income on lottery games in the hope of hitting it big.

The odds are tilted toward the state. Lottery games are a sucker bet.

Because state governments have become dependent on the millions lotteries bring in every year, they aren’t going away.

But state governments should be working to reduce, not increase, gambling opportunities. That would do a whole lot more to help problem gamblers than tossing a few coins (relatively speaking) into addiction programs.