Playing with the card gives bread to one million Portuguese

The phrase “drinking wine means giving bread to a million Portuguese” was born in the context of a campaign carried out in the 1930s to promote national products, similar to what happened simultaneously in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America with the “Buy the British” and “Buy American products” initiatives. .

All this makes sense from the standpoint of the defense of agriculture and national industry. Indeed, campaigns of this nature are frequent, given the positive impact on domestic wealth production, the balance of payments, and, Last but not least, Job creation. This will mean, going back to the “drinking wine” campaign, that the economy of the wine sector will, at that time, have a direct and indirect impact on the generation of jobs that would secure the livelihood of about a million people.

To see if this number is correct or not, it will be clarified again, since what makes this sentence famous unfortunately is that it is related to less noble intentions. Is that excessive wine consumption not only drugged people – making them forget the social, political and economic conditions that Estado Novo imposed on them – but it also had a major “advantage” of addiction. And of course, whatever your reason for creating jobs, doing so at the cost of addiction promotion is, at least, not worth it at all.

Unfortunately, all this reminds me of a new instant lottery launch project aimed at financing cultural heritage. To be held on May 18th, it is an initiative of the government in partnership with Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, the entity that monopolizes the kind of games of chance in Portugal.

We are the European Union country that spends the most on games. These are also known to be addictive bets that mainly affect lower income groups. The dependency resulting from the Scratch Card results from the fact that, as many studies show, it is fast, cheap, and easy to purchase and it is not necessary to understand the game.

I know that defending cultural heritage must be a national goal. But is it worth anything? Is it right to do that at the expense of addiction? And above all, is it worth feeding him knowing that it is a social wound?