The official lottery is the government-run gaming operation that raises funds to support state programs, including public education and infrastructure. It also provides a mechanism for state governments to increase their revenue without raising taxes or cutting services, which are extremely unpopular with voters. In the United States, the official lotteries are operated by state-controlled agencies and must comply with state gambling laws. In Canada, the official lotteries are operated by interprovincial corporations owned by provincial and territorial governments: Atlantic Lottery Corporation (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador), Loto-Québec (Quebec), Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (Ontario) and Western Canada Lottery Corporation (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories, and Alberta).

Despite their ostensibly good intentions, the campaigns that lottery commissions run to promote their products are often misleading. For one thing, they wildly inflate the impact of lottery revenues on state budgets; as Cohen points out, in California’s first year, for example, lottery revenue covered just five percent of the state’s education funding. And as with all commercial products, lottery advertising is heavily promoted in neighborhoods that are disproportionately poor, Black or Latino, and where poverty and unemployment rates are highest.

But there’s something else going on here too, and it has to do with the inextricable human urge to gamble. People just plain like to play the numbers, and that’s a part of what lotteries are selling to people. The real message, however, is not that playing the lottery is fun, but that it’s a way to win money.