The Arkansas Lottery launched five new scratch-off tickets last week.
The tickets cost anywhere from $1 – $10 each, and are part of the state-run lottery’s trend of rolling out a steady stream of new lottery games every month.
As we have said many times, these scratch-off tickets prey on poor and desperate lottery players by offering long odds on expensive tickets and big jackpot prizes.
Players who buy the lottery’s newest $10 scratch-off ticket have roughly a two out of three chance of losing their money — and the odds of winning the jackpot are a staggering one in 360,000.
Scratch-off tickets like these are controversial, because they are tied to problem gambling and gambling addiction.
A 2015 study in Canada described them as “paper slot machines.”
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions found a link between how often a person played scratch-off tickets and the severity of a person’s gambling problem.
Despite all of this, the Arkansas Lottery relies very heavily on scratch-off tickets for revenue.
And even though lottery ticket sales have spiked this year, only a fraction of the money the Arkansas Lottery makes is going to students.
Photo Credit: Powerball and Mega Millions Lottery Billboard in Missouri by Tony Webster, on Flickr.
