The State - News from May 17, 1985

The chairman of the state Lottery Commission said California’s lottery will be the biggest in the world--and the cleanest. Addressing the annual convention of the Police Officers Assn. in San Francisco, Commission Chairman Howard Varner acknowledged the delegates’ concern about the possibility of “underworld” involvement in the billion-dollar lottery but pointed out that lotteries already in operation in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona, Ohio and Colorado have appeared to have escaped such contamination. “We do anticipate some problems in the games themselves,” Varner said. “Somebody’s always trying to beat the system.” He expressed confidence, however, that the cheating would be held to a minimum by safeguards built into the system and that organized crime would “never get a foothold.”