FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Little Rock – On Tuesday Arkansas voters passed Issue 4, a state constitutional amendment authorizing four casinos in Arkansas.

Family Council President Jerry Cox issued a statement, saying, “This is a bad deal for Arkansas. These casinos are going to be festering sores in our
communities. They’re going to pull money out of the local economies and plunge some of our poorest families deeper into poverty. That’s why Family
Council remains committed to opposing casino gambling at every possible turn.

“Out-of-state gambling interests spent millions of dollars to persuade Arkansas voters to approve this amendment, creating a casino monopoly for the
Cherokee and Quapaw Indian Tribes along with owners of casinos in Hot Springs and West Memphis.

“Some people may think that Arkansans are already going to gamble, so we may as well have them gamble in Arkansas instead of going out of state. That’s terribly misguided. People who live near the border are still going to go out of state, because those casinos are closer. People who live in the middle of the state will gamble a lot more, because the casinos are closer to home. This means that Arkansas will have more gambling addicts. This means more bankruptcies, more domestic violence, and more families in need of food, clothing and shelter.” Cox said.

Voters in Pope County, where one of the casinos will be located, overwhelmingly rejected Issue 4, but Cox pointed out that the vote in Pope County may Not matter, because the amendment mandates the licensing of a casino there regardless of whether Pope County voters want one or not. “Under this new amendment there is no such thing as local control. The amendment automatically licenses casinos in Hot Springs and West Memphis. In Pope and Jefferson Counties, all they need is a signature from a mayor or approval by the county quorum court. After that, they are unregulated by local governments or the state legislature. Their tax rate, the types of gambling they conduct, the sale of alcohol and their hours of operation are all off limits to state or local officials.”

Cox said, “Nearly half of Arkansas voters statewide don’t want casino gambling at all. Many of the folks who supported Issue Four were misled into thinking This amendment would fund improvements to Arkansas’ roads or boost our economy. That’s not what Issue Four does. Under this constitutional amendment, casinos in Arkansas will pay some of the lowest taxes of any casinos in America, and it actually lowers taxes on our existing casinos in Hot Springs and West Memphis.”

Cox said his group remains committed to fighting casino gambling. “Issue Four was a bad amendment before the election. It’s still a bad amendment today. Gambling addiction is going to wreck a lot of lives in Arkansas and hurt a lot of families because of Issue Four. That’s why we remain committed to fighting Casino gambling in Arkansas.”

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Photo By Ralf Roletschek [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons.