All we know Left untold Beaten by a broken dream Nothing like what it used to be We’ve been chasing our demons down an empty road Singer Alan Walker These words hit home to me as I read a number of Louisiana newspaper headlines in recent weeks. I’m approaching 86 years old and life is just not the same as it was when I started out in public life back in the 1970s.
Oh, we had some backroom gambling and horse race betting back then. You could travel to Las Vegas for a special outing. Today, every kind of betting is now legal here in the Bayou State. Casino and riverboat gambling, the lottery, slot machines and video poker. Anything you want to bet on. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing a barrage of ads featuring Louisiana’s first family of sports, the Mannings, huckstering sports betting. Even Saints icon Drew Brees raked in the big bucks pushing a new casino referendum in Slidell.
“Sin taxes” used to be only placed on alcohol and tobacco just a few years ago here in the deepest of the deep southern states. But they stand alone no more. Besides new forms of gambling, marijuana use is rapidly proliferating. Initially, the drug was for medical purposes and only had two growing outlets tied to state universities. Now there are proposals in the legislature to increase these budding outlets to ten or more, and legalize recreational use throughout the state. So called “massage parlors” are growing in number, and there was a proposal in last year’s legislative session to legalize prostitution.
