LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: BUILD LEVEES AGAINST GAMBLING

To the Editor:

Here we go again -- the Yes Group saying "no" to Scott County and the proposed riverboat casino at the Port Authority. They say that gambling will be "somewhere" why not Cape? The Yes Group doesn't give enough credit for the people of Scott County or the people of Cape Girardeau.

Earlier this year people asked whether the flood was the judgment of God upon a people who chose riverboat gambling. Certainly, looking back up the river, one would wonder if that were a possibility.

The rain falls on the just and unjust, but there is an analogy with the flooding and riverboat gambling. That is: if each city doesn't build their levees high enough against riverboat gambling, it will spill over into the community affecting people who had nothing to do with the levee, nothing to do with the boat or the vote.

There will be people who succumb to the obsessive-compulsive disorder of gambling. There will be people out of work, kids without clothes and shoes, families without food for the table, broken homes, and lost jobs. There will be a higher incidence of drunken driving and the area will become more populated with the criminal element that feeds off of gambling establishment. Desperate people who wouldn't otherwise consider such things become drug users, drug dealers, and prostitutes.

At a point in time when Cape Girardeau is growing at a rate faster than ever before and we seem to have so much going for us in the way of jobs and prosperity, why wouldn't we look attractive to the Las Vegas syndicate of gambling?

There is no product produced that would benefit people of this area from riverboat gambling. There is simply an expenditure of time, a waste of talent, and a loss of money. The typical "spin" of the dollar into the economy simply isn't applicable to riverboat gambling. These people come to gamble and that is their focus. It is not really entertainment, it is an obsession for the most part.

I submit that the people coming to the boat will be our neighbors. Let's protect our neighbors and ourselves and build our levees high, whether it be in Cape Girardeau or Scott County.

Dr. Richard A. Martin

Cape Girardeau