You might recall back in the spring of last year that many convenience stores across eastern North Carolina received unexpected visits from state authorities.

They weren’t there to buy anything, but they took with them the stores’ cash as well as ATMs and video machines believed to be associated with the Godwin family of Selma.

More than a year later, a federal grand jury has indicted two members of the Godwin family (father and son) as well as their company, Regional Amusements Inc. The feds charge the duo was operating illegal gambling operations and seek the permanent confiscation of the offending video machines.

The government’s war on gambling has a long history. In more recent times, the effort focused on video poker machines and then on “sweepstakes” businesses where players simply bought time on computer terminals in stores or special parlors.

Of course, the assault on this form of gambling grew at the same time the state itself got into the gambling business — the lottery.

For 10 years, we’ve been asked to place our bets playing officially sanctioned games like Powerball or buying scratch-off tickets instead of those “evil” parlors where people might also socialize and earn rewards not provided by the state.

This is a long way of getting around to us saying we find it interesting that our General Assembly this year asked the folks at the Lottery Commission to come up with proposals on how to increase revenue from people who play the lottery in North Carolina — in other words, how can we get more people to gamble… errr, spend their recreational money, that is… on the lottery?

The folks who operate the lottery complied and submitted various suggestions on how to get more people interested in playing the games. Apparently they are not necessarily advocating these tactics, but offered up the proposals as possibilities.

As might be expected, one of the suggestions involved spending more money to advertise the state’s lottery (because we can’t hear that jingle about the first Tuesday of the month enough).

What should come as a surprise in light of the government’s war on sweepstakes games and video poker are options to develop and promote online games that could be played on smartphones or home computers.

The Senate is already backing this option, believing the state could rake in more than $60 million in sales from these “instant” games. No more having to take a pesky trip down to the local convenience store where you might actually purchase something else instead of a lottery ticket!

Then there is the proposal to establish — and we’re not making this up — interactive video lottery machines in various places throughout the state, including social places like bars or restaurants. We don’t know whether convenience stores would be considered social enough.

And then, why not also have lottery tickets for sale at your local ABC store? Oh, that’s another one of the proposals.

We have nothing against lotteries as a whole. For some people they are cheap entertainment. Unfortunately for some with gambling addictions, the games can become anchors around their necks. Money that could go for necessities in some families gets diverted.

But we do have problems with government making it illegal for anyone else to operate a gambling enterprise and then turning around and doing what was so “evil” that it had to be stamped out.

If something is considered a “vice,” does it stop being a vice when the government does it?