Good question!

Considering, in North America that 43 U.S. states (Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada do not have lottos*), all Canadian provinces, the District of Columbia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands all run government-operated lotteries, and that elsewhere in the world official lottos exist in at least 100 countries (on every inhabited continent), the short answer is… a LOT!

1. The odds of being struck by lightning are better than the odds of winning a lottery
2. Lottery is a form of taxation
3. Lotteries prey on the poor by target marketing to those who can least afford to play
4. Lottery purchases are made mostly by low-income people
5. That billboard thing in Illinois
6. You get nothing for your lottery purchase if you don’t win a prize
7. Lottery is responsible for the growing number of compulsive gamblers in the United States
8. Because state governments benefit from lottery proceeds, they can’t be trusted to regulate their industry
9. There is no assurance that lottery drawings are conducted fairly
10. Since there are relatively few payouts compared to the number lottery tickets sold, few people (only holders of winning tickets) actually benefit from lottery