Official Lottery is one of the biggest forms of gambling in the United States. People spend billions of dollars on tickets each year, and states use the revenue to fund everything from civil defense to education. But there are questions about how meaningful that money is to state budgets and whether the trade-off with people losing money is worth it.

During the early colonial period, America was heavily dependent on lottery-style gambling to fund public works projects and pay for basic services, Cohen says. This was despite a profoundly Protestant antipathy to the practice. In fact, John Hancock ran a lottery to help build Boston’s Faneuil Hall and George Washington used a lottery to fund a road across a mountain pass in Virginia.

Then, beginning in the 1960s, a series of factors—inflation, rising cost of wars and welfare programs, a booming population—started to wreak havoc with state finances. Many states, especially those that had built up generous social safety nets, found it hard to balance the books without raising taxes or cutting services. But increasing taxes or cutting services were both unpopular.

In response, states began to introduce “official” lottery games. New York, for example, started its own lottery in 1967 and promised that proceeds would be used for education. Since then, the state has raised more than 34 billion dollars in lottery sales. The New York lottery is operated by the state’s Gaming Commission and includes draw games like Powerball, Mega Millions and Take5. You can play online or at retail outlets.