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December 5, 2009

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Brief: Taverns want to install video lottery machines

Wednesday, Dec. 9, 1998 | 11:47 a.m.

The association represents as many as 6,000 bars, taverns and restaurants.

The Star-Ledger newspaper reported the bar group is proposing that the estimated $300 million to $500 million generated by the games annually be used to finance a free college tuition program.

The tuition program is similar to Georgia's HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally). Roughly 310,000 Georgia students with grade point averages of "B" or better have had their in-state public college tuition and feeds paid by $504 million in state lottery revenue.

New Jersey's Atlantic City hotel-casinos, which already have video lottery machines, have long opposed any proliferation of legalized gambling outside the resort city.

And Ed Looney, executive director of the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling, cautioned that barroom video gambling would expose a new clientele to gambling addictions.

"This type of thing could lead to a tremendous explosion of gambling that would be very detrimental to many people," he told the Star-Ledger. "There are people who will gamble on these things who wouldn't go to Atlantic City."

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