The debate over what to do with the Prairie Meadows racetrack and casino continues to rage in our fair capital city.

No one seems to be able to decide whether the track should be sold or kept, but the Racing Association of Central Iowa and the Polk County Board of Supervisors love to argue about it.

I have a solution to this problem. First, physically drag all the slot machine junkies out of the building. Then douse it with gasoline and put a match to it.

We would all be better off without it.

It was a dark day when casino gambling became legal in Iowa. Now every wide spot in the road in the state that has the nerve to call itself a town is looking to be the next community to have a casino.

Half the riverboats that were supposed to magically bring tons of revenue to the state have pulled up their anchors and set sail, and the towns that shelled out big bucks to bring them there are left holding the bag.

People are wasting their lives and money in casinos pursuing the big payoff that rarely comes.

Worst of all, casino gambling has encouraged participation in the most mundane activity ever to pass for entertainment: slot machines.

There was a time not so long ago when gambling in America was done the right way. If you wanted to gamble, you had to go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

Only a select few retirees could afford to drive their Winnebagos to Vegas. There they would sip a few complimentary watered-down Highballs, drop the grandkids’ inheritance at the craps table and still have time to catch a Siegfried and Roy show.

Then they would head for home, but all the gambling and casinos and crap that comes with them stayed in Las Vegas.

Now, many states have ventured into casino gambling as a quick way to make money at the expense of their citizens.

In Iowa, as in many states, this all started with the Indian casino. When the Mesquaki (I refuse to spell it the new way) bingo parlor expanded into casino games and started making money hand over fist, Iowa’s entrepreneurs decided they wanted a piece of the action.

I thought it was a kind of poetic justice when Native Americans started getting rich at the expense of white people.

White people killed them in large numbers, took away their land, culture and way of life, but through what was obviously an oversight on the part of the government, left them an opportunity to make some pretty good money.

From the state’s point of view, the big problem with the Mesquaki casino was that the state wasn’t getting one thin dime of the casino’s profits. If the state legalized gambling and licensed the casinos, they could make all kinds of money. And so it was done.

What has been the result? Businesses in casino towns are suffering. Why would you go to a decent restaurant when you go to the casino and shove all the prime rib you can eat into your pie hole for $3.99? Why go to a movie or theater or museum, where God forbid you might learn something, when you can sit on your butt and shove nickels in a slot machine for three hours?

On top of that, a casino war has erupted between the states. Iowa used to have betting limits, but when Illinois put in casinos right across the river that didn’t have betting limits, Iowa had to stay competitive.

The real moralists pushed through a law that requires a person to be 21 before they can gamble. If you are 18 in Iowa, you can go to a juice bar and have a naked woman dance on your lap, but you can’t buy a lottery ticket because that would be immoral.

Have you ever been to a casino in Iowa? It sucks. I went to the Mesqauki casino with my brother and his wife once. It was depressing.

The people pumping coins into the slot machines were not the giddy, smiling people you see in commercials. They looked hypnotized, as if they had been watching those dials spin for hours. Many of them probably had.

I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so I took a nickel, put it in the machine and hit the button. I lost. I thought, “Well, I can see why this is so popular.”

My brother and I went to a blackjack table, where our dealer proceeded to tell us the story of how he had an engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to be too satisfied with his exciting career as a blackjack dealer in Iowa. Maybe it was the ridiculous dealer’s outfit he had to wear.

It was really sad. He talked to my brother and I like we were old friends, not just two people who sat down by him because he happened to have a deck of card and a stack of chips. I think he needed a hug, but I just tipped him instead.

The state should just let Prairie Meadows and all the other casinos go right down the crapper. Then we can turn to a more upstanding, moral, sophisticated form of entertainment; cock fighting.

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Steve Martens is a senior in journalism mass communication from Cedar Rapids.