With the start of its state-sponsored lottery last week, North Carolina became a late arrival to the legalized gambling party that has been going on in America more than four decades.

But as politicians in the 41 other states that have cranked up games of chance have found, easy money is hard to give up and even harder to keep.

After the intoxicating buzz of excitement about North Carolina's new lottery dies down, gambling and policy experts say state officials will find themselves locked in a fast dance to counter the inevitable decline in player interest. They will have to counter competition from other states and American Indian casinos offering racier and more addictive forms of legalized gambling.

In other lottery states, politicians have spurned taxes to prop up sagging revenue. Instead, they eye slot machines, casinos and more aggressive forms of lottery games.

"They're going to take the easy alternative, and that's legalized gambling," said Tom Barker, a professor of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University and co-author of "Jokers Wild: Legalized Gambling in the Twenty-first Century."

Slot machines at horse and dog racing tracks -- dubbed "racinos" -- are a popular way for states to establish another revenue stream from legalized gambling and boost the fortunes of a faltering form of betting.

Nine states have legalized slot machines, which are considered a more addictive form of gambling than lotteries. Not all the approved slots have been limited to the race track.

Pennsylvania, which has had a lottery for more than three decades, passed a 2004 law that allows 61,000 slot machines at seven race tracks and seven slot parlors around the state, including its two major cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Nevada is the only state with more slot machines.

Revenue addiction

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell touts revenue from slot machines as a means of providing property tax relief to beleaguered homeowners. But gambling experts say there was another motivation: neighboring West Virginia's approval of race track slots in 1994 and the resulting cross-border flow of Pennsylvania gamblers.

"States become more addicted to the revenues than gamblers to the game," said Richard McGowan, a Jesuit priest, associate professor of business management at Boston College and author of "State Lotteries and Legalized Gambling: Painless Revenue or Painful Mirage."

"The states are forever protective of their revenue sources, and if they see it going to another state, they want to stop it or pre-empt it."

For example, politicians in Massachusetts are considering a law that would allow racinos -- a reaction to state-approved slots in Rhode Island and Connecticut and the huge Foxwoods tribal casino in Connecticut, McGowan said.

When Tennessee launched a lottery in late December 2003, it put a $48 million dent in lottery sales in Kentucky. That increased Kentucky's interest in racinos, which had already been piqued by gambling revenue lost to Indiana's riverboat casinos, Barker said.

There's another facet of the easy money temptation North Carolina officials face, said Philip Cook, professor of public policy at Duke University.

After the first splash, lottery revenue typically sags, forcing officials constantly to introduce new games, jack up the amount of money devoted to prizes and roll out massive marketing programs to maintain interest. There's also a temptation to introduce more electronic forms of the lottery that mimic slot and video poker machines. For example, Oregon and South Dakota have "video lottery terminals" in bars.

Hard to say 'no'

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.