Scratch that promise
In the spring of 2003, newly-installed Treasurer Tim Cahill wanted to boost the take from the state's insanely successful lottery - and that meant advertising. But ad spending had been nixed some years earlier by former Senate president Tom Birmingham, who had seen his constituents blowing thousands of dollars they couldn't afford on scratch tickets.
Cheap and plentiful, scratch tickets are the lottery's crack cocaine: Go to the store, pick a shiny ticket, scratch, feel the rush, win or lose, pick another shiny ticket, repeat.
The people who buy the most scratch tickets come from hard places, like Birmingham's Chelsea. They're blue-collar workers or poor. For some of them, the fast highs are habit-forming.
After Birmingham left the State House, Cahill assured still-skittish legislators that the millions of dollars he was asking for would be used to bring new players into the lottery, rather than to target scratch ticket buyersHe told them he'd grow revenues by raising awareness of big jackpot games which tend to attract more casual, middle-class players.
So Cahill got his ad money.
What did he spend it on? Was the treasurer true to his word?
Not quite, according to figures his office sent me.
Since 2004, a distressingly large chunk of the lottery ad budget has gone to promoting scratch tickets. And Cahill's advertising has focused on scratch ticket players even more heavily in the past couple of years, as the lottery's net revenues have slid. He devoted a quarter of his first ad budget - $1.3 million - to selling scratch tickets. He pulled back in 2005, spending $830,000 of his $10 million budget to advertise them, but stepped it up again starting in 2006. In 2007, scratch tickets' share of the ad budget jumped to 18 percent.
Last year, Cahill directed a whopping $3 million - 31 percent of the ad budget - to the instant games, including promoting a new $20 scratch ticket.
Lottery marketing director Diane Anderson says the more expensive ticket brings in new players and the advertising - on TV, in newspapers, and on websites, including Boston.com, is aimed at people who don't usually buy scratch tickets.
Maybe, but it's also reaching the others. Habitual scratchers - especially hard-core players drawn to games with better odds - see those ads and scoop up $20 Billion Dollar Bonanza tickets, too.
This year, Cahill is on track to spend $2.45 million - a quarter of his advertising budget - promoting scratch tickets.
It's not what he said he'd do.
All of the money he has spent on advertising - $55 million since 2004 - has grown the lottery's bottom line. But that haul is as dependent on scratch tickets now as it was back then: the lottery's most addictive game has made up 70 percent of the take as long as Cahill has been treasurer, according to his figures.
Cahill wouldn't talk to me about any of this.
The treasurer is in a tough spot. He is judged by how much money his lottery brings in. But times get tough, and inevitably, the take drops. To maintain the cash flow cities and towns depend on, he has little choice but to lean more heavily on the most reliable players.
So we're making our way on the backs of those who can least afford it. This is what happens when a state stakes its fortunes on gambling. And now Cahill and other state leaders are talking about going even farther down that road with slot machines - as addictive as scratch tickets.
The last thing this state needs is to get more deeply hooked on gambling revenue. It's a shamefully regressive form of taxation, and an unreliable one at that.
But like addicts who refuse to take that first step into recovery, Cahill and the rest of them refuse to admit they have a problem.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail address is Abraham@globe.com. 
