If Connecticut turns to keno, as proposed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell, to help close the state's budget gap, it will be balancing the books by risking the health and well-being of Connecticut citizens. The money isn't worth it.

Although for many people gambling is mere entertainment, one choice among many, it stops being fun when it crosses the line to addiction. This isn't a moral choice. For a minority of people, researchers say, gambling changes the brain and creates behavior that is compulsive and addictive, something over which the gambler has no control.

Because some people will become addicted, introducing any new game of chance into our state is a serious step. Keno — which some have likened to the lottery — is more intense because the numbers are chosen with high frequency, sometimes even every few minutes. In many states the game is played in bars, and bars earn a percentage of each ticket sold. Keno has a greater potential of being addictive because it is a high-speed, high-intensity game; no skill or specific knowledge is required; there is immediate reward; and it is relatively inexpensive, at least initially.

If keno becomes a fixture in Connecticut bars — as it is in many of the 14 states where the game is legal — the danger for many people will only increase. Bars serve alcohol, and judgment is the first thing that becomes impaired after a few drinks. The combination of alcohol and keno will lead many people to gamble only because the alcohol will have lowered their inhibitions. Some will surely spend money not only on alcohol they cannot afford, but on keno tickets that they cannot afford.

Legalizing keno may potentially bring a form of gambling that combines these two addictions to every one of the state's 169 cities and towns that have bars.

Bringing keno into the state would also be shortsighted because introducing a new game of chance inevitably will increase the need for services for those who become addicted to gambling at the very moment that the state is cutting these services. A reasonable state doesn't exploit its citizens' weaknesses to raise revenue.

The state should find a way to provide a strong safety net at the time of greatest need. Keno isn't the way to do this.

Affordability, of course, is an important issue, not just for the state during today's difficult economic times, but any time. Many studies have verified that the poor spend a far greater percentage of their income buying lottery tickets than do those who earn more money.

Because so many poor people buy so many lottery tickets — even at a risk of being unable to buy groceries and pay rent — such forms of gambling have been likened, with good reason, to the most regressive tax government can impose.

But there's another reason to be troubled by the prospect of legalizing keno, and that is the likelihood that more people, and women in particular, will develop gambling addiction.

Women and men often have very different experiences with gambling. Men are more likely to start in adolescence and engage in games of competition such as poker or blackjack. Women start later in adulthood. They are more likely to engage in so-called "escape" forms of gambling such as slot machines or keno that don't involve competition, and develop gambling addiction in a far shorter period of time than men, sometimes in just three to five years.

Women who develop gambling addiction are also more likely to report other mental health issues such as clinical depression, often as the result of childhood or adult trauma such as emotional, verbal, physical or sex abuse and/or assault. Since addiction of any kind has a tremendous negative impact on the family, and women are more likely to be caretakers of children, introducing keno to every corner of our state will make its effect felt on women who become addicted and their children who will have to cope with the disastrous consequences.

Addiction is not a victimless disorder; the addiction extends far beyond the gambler to cause harm and heartbreak to an extended network of people including the spouse or partner, the children, parents and siblings, the brothers and sisters, all of whom become involved in an unnatural web of family destruction.

The bottom line: We're better than this. The state's consideration of providing more opportunities to gamble is a policy initiative that should avoided. It is not an expression of Connecticut's positive core values and our state's ability to support those values, and our families, at all levels of our society.