RALEIGH – Rep. Ray Rapp of Mars Hill says that he’s “tired of playing games with these folks,” by which he means companies who sell or operate games similar to video poker. I’m tired of playing games with “these folks,” too, by which I mean state legislators and others who seek to ban games similar to video poker.

As the Greensboro News & Record’s Mark Binker makes clear in a recent piece, it is all essentially a game.

A couple of years ago, the North Carolina General Assembly made quite a show of passing a law that, supporters claimed, would clamp down on the scourge of legalized gambling in our state. Many of these same legislators had previously voted to put North Carolina’s state government in the gambling business, via a state lottery that is run by private vendors and marketed aggressively to North Carolinians as a good and noble thing to do.

At the same time, everyone with any knowledge of the subject realized that the state legislature couldn’t possible prohibit North Carolinians from engaging in high-stakes gambling, given the prevalence of online sites, most based off-shore, that allow people to play poker or other games with virtually unlimited monetary bets.

Indeed, as it turns out, the North Carolina legislature couldn’t even prohibit North Carolinians from playing the equivalent of video poker. After the ban passed, companies merely adjusted their business models accordingly to make use of apparently legal systems akin to sweepstakes, sometimes simply refurbishing the old video-poker machines and setting them up in convenience stores and pool halls as before.

Rep. Rapp and other lawmakers now want to clamp down on the new gambling operations, making the same paternalistic arguments they used the last time. Again, many of the same folks are also in favor of giving the operators of North Carolina’s state lottery more freedom to offer and advertise games to increase sales. And few seem to like Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning’s ruling that as long as video poker is allowed on the Cherokee reservation, the video poker ban cannot legally be enforced.

All of this constitutes not just a game, but a particularly costly and convoluted one. It’s time for North Carolina to end it. Here are the steps that policymakers need to take to exit the game:

• Rescind the video-poker ban. It is unfair, unenforceable, and contrary to the basic principles of personal freedom upon which our state and nation were founded. Rep. Earl Jones of Greensboro has it right: “I really get sick and tired of paternalism,” he said of the video-poker ban. “In this case, class paternalism, in thinking you know better for someone else as to how competent or accountable they are and responsible they are for spending their money.”

• Rescind the legislation authorizing a state lottery. The only reason the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law “lost” its lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the lottery’s passage is that a member of the N.C. Supreme Court found a convenient excuse to recuse himself from the case. State government should not be in the gambling business. It should not tax the gambling business any more than it taxes people who engage in any other form of business. Its position on gambling should be strict neutrality.

• Rescind any state legislation recognizing a special right for Indian tribes to operate casinos on their property as long as other North Carolinians are legally forbidden from doing the same. Demand that our congressional delegation submit legislation to rescind any federal legislation giving special gambling privileges to Indian tribes.

• Enact and enforce any necessary laws to ensure that gambling operations in North Carolina do not engage in fraud.

• Then, and in perpetuity, mind your own bloody business. Gamble if you want to. Abstain if you want to. Commend or condemn gamblers at your discretion. The state should neither encourage nor discourage gambling, or any other private behavior that does not infringe on a fellow citizen’s inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.

The next time a politician tells you he believes in freedom, see if he’s bluffing. See if he’ll agree to stop playing the gambling-prohibition game.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation