Palmetto Public Square

Gambling Law in South Carolina:
An Analysis of National Opinion and the South Carolina Code of Law

by Jacob Davis

Enforcement in the Spotlight

It was big news in April 2006 when Mt. Pleasant police cited 22 people after breaking up a high-stakes poker game in what papers called a “raid.”[1] In April 2008, it even made the news in Columbia when Hanahan police raided another underground game, citing an assistant prosecutor and seizing more than $40,000.[2] This kind of strict law enforcement, of laws that some say “go too far,”[3] has helped prompt state legislators to push for a loosening of gambling restrictions in South Carolina.

After a long and bitter fight to ban video poker, and perhaps an even uglier battle to establish a state “Education Lottery,” South Carolina citizens could be forgiven for shouting “Enough already!” to arguments over legalized gambling.  Unfortunately, the recent well-publicized “raids” on “underground” poker games have brought the issue back to the forefront.  Scarcely does an article appear in the newspapers (or online for that matter) without including the old saw that South Carolina law prohibits “playing Monopoly at [the] kitchen table.”[4] Never mind that it probably doesn’t, or that no evidence exists that anyone has ever even been ticketed for something so preposterous.  Even the South Carolina Attorney General’s office is forced to joke that, “Candyland…is safe” in South Carolina.[5] Read more…

by Bill Connor, guest blogger
The often controversial Sen. Robert Ford of Charleston recently announced that he will run for governor in 2010 on a platform centered on bringing back video poker.

Sen. Ford has said that his gubernatorial bid would be different because he believes bringing back and taxing video poker will provide South Carolina with the money it needs to serve the state’s neediest while keeping taxes low.

Sen. Ford claims video poker will solve South Carolina’s woeful financial situation, generating $750 million by taxing the industry that was outlawed here nearly a decade ago. After reviewing Sen. Ford’s appeal for video poker, I had to ask myself: How can a State Senator be so passionate about a quick, yet ultimately detrimental, short-term gimmick? Leadership means looking beyond the “now” of the superficial gains to the “future” of second and third order effects. This includes economic leadership. 

As Henry Hazlitt put it best: “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy.”

A true leader will not stay lost in a forest, looking to cut down the next tree to claim “progress.” A true leader climbs a tree to see the whole forest, develops a vision for getting out, and leads people toward that long-term vision. 

Read more…