Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards recently signed into law House Bill 295 which will allow electronic gambling machines take bills up to 0, up from , effective August 1. The measure also lets video poker machines accept transferrable vouchers up to an unlimited amount. Electronic gambling machines in casinos already take vouchers worth an unlimited amount of money.
State Rep. Chad Brown, the bill’s sponsor, said, “There is no cap on how much you can put into the machine now. People can put five $20 bills in at a time. But it necessitates having a cashier, which is an added expense.” Under the new law, truck stops, bars and restaurants can operate video poker machines without a cashier to break down $100 bills for gamblers, Brown explained.
Louisiana has more than 13,000 active video poker machines, with more than half located at 200 truck stops; 2,900 are at bars, 1,500 at restaurants, 1,000 at racetracks and 50 distributed among seven hotels, according to Louisiana Gaming Control Board data. Lobbyist Alton Ashy, representing 21 video poker companies, said half of the restaurants and bars with video poker machines would close without the gambling revenue.
Outside of casinos, technology that could accept vouchers worth an unlimited amount of money is not yet available on Louisiana video poker machines. Brown said the new law will allow it when the technology comes online. “This just really puts truck stops, bars and restaurants on a level playing field with the casinos,” he said.
The national anti-gambling group Stop Predatory Gambling group opposed the Louisiana legislation. Director Les Bernal said, “The goal for state-sanctioned gambling, like video poker machines, has always been to maximize profits. The only entity that benefits from this is the gambling operator. These machines are designed to get people trapped in a zone. It allows people to enter this zone for a longer period without disruption.”
New York University Associate Professor Natasha Schull said her research agrees with Bernal’s assessment. “Allowing people to put in $100 bills could definitely exacerbate problem gambling, to the extent that it makes it easier to get lost in ‘the zone’ of playing for a longer time, and removes opportunities for decision-making and self-stopping,” she said.
However, Brown stated individuals need to be responsible for their own actions when they gamble. “It goes back to personal choice. I’ve never seen anybody being dragged into a video poker shop,” he said.
In the fiscal 2015-2016 budget, video poker machines generated revenue of $580 million, including $31.5 million in New Orleans. The bulk of the revenue, $402 million, came from video poker at truck stops. Of the total, $185 million was distributed to government agencies, with $125 million going to the state’s general fund for higher education and health care.
During Edwards’ 2015 race for governor, individual video poker companies gave him $67,000 in political contributions. FAIR, a political action community for the industry, gave him $5,000, according to campaign data.
