news-record.com

North Carolina lottery officials want the state's Hispanic residents to give their share. They'd like to run a Spanish-language ad campaign to induce more purchases by a fast-growing segment of the population.

If only they can sidestep the state's lottery law, which says: "No advertising may intentionally target specific groups or economic classes."

The lottery commission this week directed its staff to come up with a way to pitch the lottery to Hispanics without violating the law.

No es posible.

The legislature clearly meant to avoid exploitation of particular ethnic groups. If Hispanics tend to spend less than other groups on lottery tickets, then they deserve credit for frugality.

That's not how lotteries across the country see it, unfortunately. A March article in Lottery Insights, the publication of the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, noted that even affluent Hispanics "just dabble in the lottery. ... The challenge is how to make the lottery a more appealing recreation to these occasional users."

Last year's Lottery Conclave held by La Fleur magazine in Miami offered several programs on marketing to Hispanics. The California lottery recently won an Advertising Age award for its Spanish-language campaign. In Massachusetts, which operates one of the country's most successful lotteries, declining sales prompted efforts to reach the state's "growing Hispanic population with Spanish-language ads in Hispanic newspapers, radio and Web sites," the Boston Globe reported.

North Carolina lottery officials know they have to tap into that market to increase revenues. They may argue that ads in Spanish don't "target" any group but simply recognize the wider use of that language in our state. The question of how far the law can be stretched might have to go to the courts.

Lottery leaders should not pretend, however, that this has anything to do with making a service equally available. They just want to get more money from Hispanics. But their pitch isn't likely to sound any better in Spanish than it does in English.