For a decade, gambling opponents have used various arguments to talk Mainers out of a casino.

And, with each passing year, the arguments have rung more and more hollow.

Gambling is no way to build an economy, they have said.

Well, try telling that to the Bangor City Council, which has reaped millions of dollars from Hollywood Slots and which opposes allowing Western Maine the same opportunity.

The Bangor council will use its share of the revenue, about $2 million per year, to build a new civic center across the street from the racino. If that’s not economic development, we don’t know what is.

Or, try telling the Bangor Chamber of Commerce, which has seen Hollywood Slots create 350 jobs, build a 152-room hotel, attract about a million visitors per year and generate some $65 million in revenue.

Yet they, too, oppose allowing that same sort of opportunity in southern and Western Maine.

For years, opponents claimed a casino would create crime and produce more problem gamblers.

But the evidence is nonexistent. Bangor’s police chief told the Maine Sunday Telegram that the crimes associated with the Bangor racino are relatively insignificant.

A fund, meanwhile, designed to help problem gamblers remains untapped.

Critics have argued that a casino would hurt Maine’s wholesome “brand.”

Yet, last year, Maine’s tourist industry had an excellent year.

The only thing that hasn’t panned out at Hollywood Slots is the pretext that accompanied its approval by voters — that it would save Maine’s harness-racing industry.

Despite bigger purses, the value of bets placed at Bangor Raceway has declined nearly 40 percent since 2006, according to the Telegram story.

The proponents of a casino in Oxford County have been more straightforward about their intentions: They are all Maine businesspeople trying to create jobs and economic activity in an area that has a 10 percent unemployment rate.

This is the first time the Sun Journal has endorsed a casino issue, for two reasons.

First, the time is right and other solutions have simply not worked. A host of businesses in Western Maine have closed and few have opened to take their place. The region needs this casino to help boost its growing tourist economy.

This casino could create 1,700 direct jobs and, perhaps, another 1,000 spinoff positions.

Second, we have faith in the group of local investors behind this project, all successful Maine businesspeople who are committed to controlling this casino.

The profits in Bangor go to Penn National, an out-of-state gaming conglomerate. The money generated by the Oxford casino is more likely to be plowed back into Maine’s economy.

The people behind the Lewiston casino proposal are all well-intentioned. But we do not see that group having the credibility or capital to pull off a casino in downtown Lewiston.

Bluntly, a casino will be built at some point in Maine, as gaming gains greater and greater acceptance.

Either Western Maine will get in on the ground floor, or it will not.

Either the jobs will be here, where they are needed, or in some town south of here or on the coast.

We urge Lewiston-Auburn voters, and those across Western Maine, to seize this opportunity. It may not come again.

Vote “yes” on Question 1.

editorialboard@sunjournal.com

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