What happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas

Do you know why “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?” Because, even in this Kim Kardashian / Paris Hilton world, what’s done there is usually too vulgar, stupid and shameful to be acknowledged anywhere else.

Drunk, broke and compromised is how many people leave Sin City. It’s not difficult to understand why they don’t want to broadcast what brought them to that weary state.

Vegas is happy being a sleaze town, happy with its garish hotels, its lunatic arcades, and the manic 24-houra-day commitment to vice at every price. And for a while Vegas was almost a standalone phenomenon, its embrace of various villainies (and lounge musicians) tolerated because it was out in a desert. Where else could the Rat Pack flourish?

In recent years, however, its example has been contagious. More and more cities and towns all over North America turned an envious eye toward Las Vegas, saw there a great money pit, and wondered if they could copy its dubious “success.”

After all, they had played at the edges of vice for years. Many had seen a gusher from lotteries. Every small-town bar had or wanted a wall of video gambling machines —

real vampires these devices. In hard times, many a life has been insidiously sucked dry in this way. Convenience stores are in main case mainly lottery terminals with a stock of Campbells soup and Kraft Dinner as a backdrop.

So there’s no secret to the appeal of a casino for the political class. They offer a gutless way to raise revenues.

Gutless, but not painless. Gambling feeds on the persistent weakness of a subset of every population. Much like alcohol, it carries in its train an inevitable social cost — broken homes and broken lives. In the early days of gambling, the numbers racket was the almost-exclusive domain of gangsters and the Mafia. Its status as a vice was unclouded.

It seems to have lost most of its public moral taint, but gambling is as pernicious as

it always has been. Toronto is now looking at making itself a casino city. It’s not the first. Halifax played that wild card a long time ago.

After all, what possible reason could there be for wanting to go to Halifax if you couldn’t lose money there?

All poor Halifax has is a splendid harbour, a wonderful history, a welcoming people, and a delightful cuisine. Lord’s sake, it’s almost as attractive and alluring as St. John’s. But along the way the idea took hold that more people would go to Halifax … not for the people, the culture, and the scenery, but because it offered slot machines and roulette tables in windowless rooms — a chance to avoid sunlight and a view of the harbour.

Let me abandon irony. Halifax is a beautiful city. Its casino is a disfiguration.

And so is the idea of Toron-

to succumbing to this fever. It’s ironic in its way. Toronto likes to advertise itself as a caring city, one in particular that holds the health of its citizens as something like the highest good. If you so much as look at a picture of a cigarette in Toronto, you’re seen as slightly less than human. On tobacco, it’s fundamentalist.

But here it is about to welcome gambling on a large scale. No government should act as a sponsor — the trendy word is “enabler” — of activities it knows to be harmful. But as with alcohol, the money coming in quiets the otherwise exhibitionistic conscience. They’ll throw a few bucks at assistance programs, pay for a few public service announcements (Gamble wisely!) and rake in the proceeds.

So I was very pleased to see one leader, the Catholic Archbishop of Toronto, come out

so clearly and vigorously on this matter. He nails the vile hypocrisy involved. In a pastoral letter, Cardinal Thomas Collins writes: “It is sometimes said that should anyone become addicted, gambling’s proceeds can be used to treat their addiction. Apart from the fact that this is rather dubious logic, as it makes more sense not to cause the problem in the first place, problem gambling is a serious public health concern.”

The Archbishop is right. State or government sponsored gambling is obnoxious. Casinos are the last refuge of incompetent city management. Toronto should shun them. For those who must have an outlet for throwing money away, there is always a cheap flight to the flashy city in the desert next to Death Valley.