RALEIGH, N.C. — It’s no surprise, that lotteries have been around in American history even in the pre-American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin himself even helped organize a lottery in 1748 in Philadelphia to help fund a militia for defense.
State lotteries, however, weren’t a thing until 1934 with Puerto Rico being the first U.S. government-run lottery and New Hampshire following suit 30 years later with an official state lottery.
For North Carolina though, our state lottery history is more recent, and for that, we only have to go back to August of 2005.
With a 24-24 split in the North Carolina Senate, then Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue broke the tie with her affirmative vote – passing the creation of the education lottery to the governor’s table.
“It took North Carolina a while to get comfortable with the idea of a state-sponsored lottery, and that finally happened in August of 2005 and the first tickets were sold on March 30th of 2006," Van Denton of North Carolina's Education Lottery said.
In terms of lotteries, North Carolina was the last state on the East Coast to adopt a state-run lottery.
"Should a state be involved in entertainment like the gaming that comes with the lottery games and would that be good for the state or would it harm the state’s citizens? But the mission was always to raise money for a good cause but to do it fairly and responsibly," Denton proclaimed.
From the get-go, it was always meant to be an education lottery similar to North Carolina’s neighboring states.
“Many lotteries in the south chose education as the big cause, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky! So, each state can pick the cause that would benefit their state the most," Denton said.
For North Carolina, they chose to champion education.
From 2005, when people were saying they were excited to see "positive things happening", to 17 years later with people proclaiming the lottery was "life-changing", people still seem happy with the choice.
The most recent Powerball jackpot won was $1.765 billion which was sold in southern California.