Andrew Welsh-Huggins Associated Press

COLUMBUS- Anti-lottery opponents, suing to prevent Ohio from joining a multistate lottery, said Tuesday they also plan a $50,000 to $100,060 ad campaign this year to eliminate all state-sponsored gambling.

“As an economic tool, gambling is not sustainable,” said David Zanotti, president of the Ohio Roundtable, a private, non-profit advocacy group on public policy.

"To keep propping up state government with a nonsustainable tool is a scam."

The Roundtable, supported by contributions from individuals and businesses, helped defeat ballot issues in 1990 and 1996 that would have brought casino gambling to the state.

The group intends the ad cam-paign, on radio and cable TV, as the first step over the next several years to persuade lawmakers to stop with In funding state government a lottery.

In 1973, Ohio amended its constitution to allow a lottery. By law, all lottery profits must go to the Department of Education, where they make up about 6 percent of the department’s budget.

A spokesman for Gov. Bob Taft said the governor is opposed to eliminating the lottery.

‘The lottery serves a purpose in the state to education and without definite support it we would have to come up with funds in another manner,” said Taft spokesman Joe Andrews.

Church groups and anti-gambling activists sued Tuesday over the state’s decision to join a multistate lottery to help erase a $1.5 billion budget deficit.

The lawsuit, filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, argues that the constitution permits only a lottery run exclusively by Ohio with no involvement by other states.