"Gambling just hasn’t come to Oklahoma. It’s practically taken over the state.

In just a few years, we have gone from 0 casinos to 88, which is five more than you will find in Las Vegas, and we’ve added a state-sanctioned lottery to fund education.

This rapid expansion raises a few issues that we need to consider very seriously before we allow more gambling opportunities to develop.

We are not sounding an alarm, such as one you might hear from gambling’s religious opponents who often predict that gambling will wreck our morals and society. But we are saying we need to gather the gambling interests in the state together and talk about where we’re headed and whether some limits on the industry are needed."

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Editorial: State has gambling questions to answer (The Muskogee Phoenix 6/18)