However, that's not to say that the government couldn't do a better job of educating the public on it. Lotteries are definitely aggrandized with all the bells and whistles to make people feel like they have a real shot at winning which I would argue could draw in people who wouldn't have played--lottery, numbers games, or otherwise.
Haven't law enforcement tactics particularly against organized crime improved greatly in meantime? While there are important concerns about the scope and application of these laws and regulations, it seems to me that moving around large amounts of cash without the federal government noticing has become more difficult for criminals (and non-criminals) than ever before. And might modern illegal numbers games in immigrant communities be related to notoriously poor law enforcement involvement in those communities, which allows criminal numbers games to remain relatively unmolested?
Maybe I'm wrong about all of that, but something else to consider is whether gamified savings accounts might reduce demand for illegal numbers games just as state-run lotteries do. If gamified savings accounts can suppress illegal numbers games in the same way state-run lotteries do, while at the same time inflicting less harm on economically vulnerable populations, that seems like a win-win scenario.
Do you have a source for that? My recollection from my own reading years ago is that the criminal numbers games tended to pay better odds than modern state-run lotteries.
So, in general, worse than numbers games, though better if you choose the right game.
[0] https://wizardofodds.com/games/lottery/california-lottery/
This is exactly it. And it is not something that should be dismissed, it has pretty much been proven correct. In the US, before state run lotteries were present and popular, there were criminal run "numbers games" which were quite similar to lotteries but with much worse payout ratios and where the criminals that ran them often refused to pay for various reasons.
In the Scorcesse classic movie "Mean Streets" one of the storylines is about a kid that wins one of those numbers games but the person that runs the game refuses to pay him because he is of a mixed race.
Numbers games are very rare in the US nowadays and when present are only present in poor immigrant communities that do not know much about the state run lotteries. The state run lotteries did a pretty good job of getting rid of the numbers games and thus depriving organized crime of a source of revenue while providing better odds of success for lottery players and also taking in money for the government and thus saving taxpayer money.
The original lottery idea was also reasonably effective at keeping individual betting volumes low. They did this by making sure that each ticket was relatively cheap and required relatively large amount of work to determine the winner. Thus it was hard for someone to buy many tickets. Unfortunately, this is something that has slowly been eroding as lottery systems try to get more revenue and encourage compulsive buying.
So no I do not think state lotteries should be banned but it may be a good idea to change the rules for advertising or the games themselves to discourage individuals from blowing too much money on them.