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NC Lottery offers whiff of a chance

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Tureen Sutton smells a BBQ Bucks scratch-off lottery ticket outside of Clyde Cooper’s BBQ on Tuesday. The N.C. Education Lottery unveiled the new barbecue-scented tickets during an event at the downtown Raleigh restaurant. The $2 ticket is the state’s first scented scratch-off game. Other states offer coffee, chocolate and bouquet scents.
Tureen Sutton smells a BBQ Bucks scratch-off lottery ticket outside of Clyde Cooper’s BBQ on Tuesday. The N.C. Education Lottery unveiled the new barbecue-scented tickets during an event at the downtown Raleigh restaurant. The $2 ticket is the state’s first scented scratch-off game. Other states offer coffee, chocolate and bouquet scents. Jill Knight jhknight@newsobserver.com

It’s tough to have any kind of gambling game that has some measure of dignity, but the N.C. Education Lottery, copying other states, has come up with a doozie: There will be barbecue-scented scratch-off tickets involving a whiff of a chance winning up to $25,000.

So we’re going to try to merge one of the state’s points of culinary pride with something that is decidedly not a point of pride – a state lottery. (The Indiana lottery offers bacon-scented tickets promoted as “Bringin’ home the bacon.”)

We’ve long opposed the lottery as a bad bargain no matter how much money it raises for public education. But, OK, it’s legal and people are free to play it. But barbecue-scented tickets? Do lottery officials really think people are going to be lured into a game because the ticket reminds them of chopped ’cue?

Not unless they can put it on a hamburger bun and eat it.

This story was originally published September 2, 2015 at 6:56 PM with the headline "NC Lottery offers whiff of a chance."

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