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(Jamma) There are those who invest a 'fortune' in magic tickets, sometimes even half a salary (in the most serious cases even everything), those who are habitués of the resellers and choose one day a week to concentrate on the ticket and those without think twice refuse the rest of the tobacconist selflessly taking a coupon in exchange. The fact is that the 'scratch card' has become a real mania that knows no age, even studied by psychologists and anthropologists. And in Niscemi, in the province of Caltanissetta, instant lottery lovers have become so many. The members of the Lions Club board noticed this and therefore decided to found a "No scratch and win" movement. They are serious, and have in fact written to the President of the Republic, the Chamber, the Senate and the Council of Ministers.
In the letter Salvatore Ravalli and Giuseppe d'Alessandro, respectively presidents of the local Lions Club and of the development and social issues committee, denounce how "gambling fever has by now pervaded what was once a people of saints, poets and navigators, to the point that this new disease, gambling addiction as they call it – it is widespread among 4% of the population”.
“We are turning to you – writing to the Head of State – because this problem has reached worrying levels at a time when the galloping crisis and uncertainties about the future only aggravate the situation. And as in all diseases, it is the weakest who pay the most. The elderly especially. Precisely for them - they press - this State has prepared the poisoned meatball: to sell the illusion of getting rich by luring them precisely in the places they most frequent, i.e. the offices of the Italian Post Office; there, going to collect their pension, they 'buy' the scratch cards, creating quarrels and problems, even survival ones, in the families”. And they thunder: "Deceiving weak people borders on criminal activity and it is immoral that it is the State that holds the gambling counter, because this is it!".
Ravalli and D'Alessandro, who also addressed the letter to the Poste Italiane company, define “our beautiful Italy, like Pulcinella's nation; on one hand he gives his pension and on the other he takes it back in a treacherous and underhanded way”. And we are already thinking of a collective action with the "NoGrattaeVinci" movement, trusting in the support of the Lions Clubs of Italy so that "our complaint has wide resonance".
Intano, just today, the President of the Chamber Boldrini sent a note to the Club of Niscemi in which he undertakes to transmit to the competent Parliamentary Commission "your letter, so that the deputies who are part of it can read it and take the initiatives they deem appropriate".
