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Sfx: ambient sound of outside
The Stateline store in Mason specializes in three product lines; cigarettes, beer and lottery tickets.
All this week the New Hampshire Lottery is celebrating its 40th anniversary hosting little parties with promotional giveaways...
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3:55 sfx: celebrating the lottery, games, etc.
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Sfx: the Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"
...music, and free pop and pizza.
On her way in to the Stateline Variety store, Donna Braizle enters into a free drawing and shares a quick laugh with the lottery folks.
But once inside the Stateline, it's all business for Brazile.
She parks herself at the counter, and digs out a stack of game cards.
She goes back and forth between filling in the numbers she hopes will bring in the big money and scratching off instant tickets with her lucky coin.
She does this for about 15 minutes.
This habit goes back to a day when she came really close.
:02 I missed cash Lotto by a digit. I had a 15 and it was a 16, and so I missed 475 thousand dollars... I've been trying ever since I got that close hit.
Brazile doesn't play every day- mostly just Wednesdays and Saturdays for Power Ball.
She guesses she spends about $100 dollars a week playing.
One time, she says she hit on a daily number good for $5000 bucks.
I asked her, since she started playing ten years ago, if she's up.
5:32 no. I don't think so. No, I don't think you could ever be up on the lottery, but it has brought me a lot of happy times that I was able to share. My little win streak with people that I love.
The lottery doesn't promise happy times.
But New Hampshire Lottery Director Rick Wisler, says it does promise the possibility of happy times.
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1:26 you can spend a dollar for a can of soda or a cup of coffee, and you can spend a dollar on a lottery ticket, and win a dollar back. Or it might win a100 million dollars, or it might not win anything. That's the gamble you are going to take. But isn't it worth a shot?...and it's a form of entertainment, b/c what else can you buy for a dollar that for the next few days, or few hours, what can I do if I win. And dream.
Dreams have always been a part of this.
The very name lottery has its roots in an Old English word meaning to foretell.
And apparently, quite a few people have tried to shape their future by playing.
Back in 1964 lottery tickets were sold only at the state's 30-odd liquor stores.
Today, tickets can be bought at over 1200 stores and gas stations statewide.
And the lottery's profits have jumped from about 6 million in 1964, to 220 million last year.
Those kinds of numbers make the Lottery's Rick Wisler smile.
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3:54 every year in September or October when our numbers are final, we have a celebration here...and we have a birthday cake, and written on there is the amount of money that was raised for education over the past year...and everybody in here has a piece of that.
The lottery wasn't always such a source of pride.
By the end of the 18 hundreds widespread corruption and scandals prompted Congress to ban the lottery.
State-run lotteries resurfaced in part, because state control brought a degree of credibility.
And lottery supporters promised profits to worthy causes -- without raising taxes.
In New Hampshire, the cause was education.
Since its inception, the New Hampshire Lottery has sent 860 million dollars to fund schools.
The New Hampshire Lottery has wrapped itself in the flag of education funding, last year alone it provided 67 million dollars.
But that amounts to only about 8% of overall state education spending.
Wisler argues, 67 million dollars is a real contribution.
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1:05 if it wasn't for the lottery, the 66-67 million dollars that was raised last year, would have had to come from somewhere else, and where would it have come from? It would have come from the taxpayers pocket.
So whose pocket is the money coming from?
The Lottery keeps some demographic data.
According to its 2003 annual report, the majority of players are men with college degrees earning between 50-75 thousand dollars a year.
But averages can be deceptive.
The typical lottery player who makes under 50 thousand dollars, actually spends more than a player who makes more money.
The lottery industry challenges that analysis.
Other national studies find that a relatively small group of players provide most of the money.
Richard Young is the director of Governmental Research at University of South Carolina.
14:29 statistically experts acknowledge, the top 5% of players account for 54% of total sales. The top ten percent of players account for 68% of sales. And the top 20% account for 82%. So if you look at it in that sense, basically there is a small group that contributes to what one might call heavy play of state lotteries.
Dick from Salem has heard his share of stories about heavy play of the lottery.
Dick, who declined to give his last name, volunteers for Gambler's Anonymous and attends two-three meetings a week.
He guesses, in the 10 years he's been going to meetings, he's seen the number of people addicted to the lottery double.
5:48...they say well, people should be able to control themselves, but there's people out there, who can't control themselves. They got to get help. And it's all there is to it. some people just have a very addictive personality. And those are the ones that are supplying the lottery, and the casinos, and the horses.
On all of its tickets, the lottery prints play responsibility, and the warning shows up in its public service announcements.
But what the lottery sells is winning big.
Mary Sanderson won big, netting 66 million dollars playing Powerball a few years ago.
But Sanderson says winning wasn't just a bowl of cherries.
3:45 I had people who I thought were friends, and I became a walking ATM to them....if you can meet someone who doesn't know, that's great, but if they know you've won, it's always in the back of your mind, why? Why? What do they want? And it's a cynical point of view but like I said, we learned it the hard way.
Sanderson, a former telephone operator, says the money did allow her to move out of her drug and gang infested neighborhood, adopt two kids and realize her dream.
13:26 I wanted to be on a farm in the middle of nowhere, bothered by no one, surrounded by my animals. And for the most part I have achieved that.
That's a great story, but the odds of winning Powerball today are 120 million to one.
For NHPR News, I'm DG.
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