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North Carolina has placed limits on the amount of advertising lottery officials can deploy and requires that at least 35 percent of revenue goes to education programs. But Cook worries these limits will be bypassed once revenue starts to fall.

"Once you get that started, it will be hard to say no when it comes to introducing a new game or an aggressive marketing campaign," he said. "We're going to be constantly faced with decisions about doing more and offering more, and those decisions need to be made with an eye toward the public good and not just the bottom line."

Since New Hampshire enacted the first state-sponsored lottery of the modern era in 1963, lotteries have been touted as a pain-free alternative to tax increases and justified as an innovative way to pay for public programs -- chiefly, public schools.

But the fast flow of cash from a lottery creates a hunger for more of the same and lessens the likelihood that politicians will take on the tough but necessary task of tax reform, Barker said. And when hard times strike, politicians are tempted to break their vows and start siphoning lottery money away from the programs the lottery is supposed to support.

"The problem with the states' using lotteries to raise money for earmarked expenses is that, generally, that money doesn't wind up going to those projects," Barker said.

Backlash of voters

While politicians are entranced by the revenue, their constituents have shown ambivalence in public referendums about casinos, said Bill Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevado, Reno.

For example, South Florida voters rejected a 2005 local referendum to allow slot machines in Miami-Dade County but approved it in neighboring Broward County. Florida has a lottery, Indian casinos and casino cruise boats.

"There's been a slow but noticeable backlash against more gambling," Eadington said.

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