While gambling is banned in Utah, casinos, racetracks and lotteries are available near every state border. A Morning News series last year found that Utahns spent an estimated quarter-billion dollars a year gambling in border states. The casino industry figures that one of every four Utah adults gambled in a casino last year.

Morning News research last year even found that the top six Idaho lottery sales sites are all on the Utah border — and they sell up to 27 times as many tickets as the average Idaho lottery site.

Also, many bingo and poker halls operate on the edge of the law inside Utah despite its gambling bans. Some cities have attempted to prosecute or shut down such operations, while other cities have ignored them.

Many Utah bingo halls use electronic machines that take money as fast or faster than slot machines — but owners claim the gambling is free (and therefore legal) with the purchase of (often very expensive) food.

The Pew survey said that only 28 percent of Americans now view gambling as morally wrong and noted that the Wall Street Journal recently said "gambling has gone from sin to vice to guilty pleasure and has come, finally, to be simply another point of interest on the entertainment map."

A Morning News survey last year found that a majority of Utahns saw gambling as an acceptable activity — at least for others, if not themselves.

It showed that 4 percent said gambling is a harmless form of entertainment; 38 percent said it is an acceptable form of entertainment that could pose danger if not monitored closely; 11 percent said it is "acceptable for others but not for me," and a minority of 43 percent said it is an unacceptable activity because of potential harms.

Also last year in a Morning News poll, 69 percent of Utahns said gambling should not be legalized here while 30 percent said it should.

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E-mail: lee@desnews.com