Not everyone’s going to be a winner whenever the lottery commission gets around to implementing legalized sports gambling at some point in the next year. There will certainly be people for whom the easy access to fast-twitch endorphins will pave the way to financial ruin. Then again, the same thing happens with day-traders.
But nobody’s a bigger winner than North Carolina’s pro sports teams from the conversion of sports wagering from an underground, illegal activity into one of the permissible vices that the state is willing to supervise and regulate in return for a cut of the profits – like cigarettes or alcohol (or marijuana, although not here … yet).
The old hypocritical hand-wringing about the morality of gambling was duly consigned to the history books Wednesday, when Gov. Roy Cooper signed the bipartisan legislation that finally crossed his desk, and it was fitting that Cooper chose the Charlotte Hornets’ home arena as the location to apply his signature.
