Simply put, the stooges who approved lotteries, etc. became our unwitting front and silent partners. Huge campaign contributions flow to both parties from the gambling lottery. Whether to meet budget shortfalls or add new programs, legalized gambling appears to be the goose that laid the golden egg. There is a political price to pay for raising taxes, and a political price to pay for cutting services. In this double bind, sometimes political leaders who claim to disapprove of gambling become politically dependent on it.
States quickly become addicted to the revenues generated by legalized gambling.
The only motivation a lawmaker has to limit expenses is budget restraints. Give government a new source of revenue and new government programs will be invented. The lottery puts the state in the awkward position of advertising and benefiting from what they are responsible for regulating. Even where lottery money is designated for education, there is no way to keep a state from diverting other revenue from education. If the answer is yes, then we're all implicated.