The world has turned upside down nowhere more dramatically in Tallahassee, where gambling used to be perceived so poorly that it took a major effort just to legalize bingo. In those days, legislators would occasionally raise a tax or two. Now taxes have become the political equivalent of original sin, and gambling is enlarging its constituency. This is not progress.

The current legislation (HB 631, CS for SB 1298 and 1326) would legalize slot machines, slyly euphemized as "video lottery terminals," at Florida's 26 horse tracks, dog tracks and jai alai frontons, which would also have a monopoly on them. The House bill is ready for floor debate. The Senate Regulated Industries Committee approved its version on a 7-4 vote the other day. It has other scheduled committee stops, but those may be waived.

Virtue is being made of this vice by the fact that the state would harvest 38 percent of the profits -- supposedly equaling $600-million a year or more -- for education. (In their present forms, the bills earmark it to construction). On that account, even the Florida School Boards Association surrendered to desperation and endorsed the slots.

But if helping the schools were the main motive, the bills would still be gathering mildew in committee in-baskets. The fundamental purpose is to bail out the race tracks and jai alai frontons, which have fallen on hard times because their faithful customers are dying off and potential new ones are being lost to Indian gambling, cruises to nowhere and junkets to Mississippi.

Their friends in the Legislature pose the question this way: Can Florida afford to lose the racing industry -- these "great corporate citizens," as one senator described them?

However, that begs the real question: Can Florida afford to save them at such a price? The remedy entails a statewide network of gambling casinos, lacking only table games, that would extract tens of billions of dollars from other sectors of the economy and profoundly aggravate Florida's already conspicuously high incidence of problem gamblers.

Those "great corporate citizens," it should be noted, are also generous campaign contributors. Since 1996, parimutuels and their principal owners, along with the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes, have accounted for at least $2.7-million in political gifts reported to the elections division. More than half came as "soft money" to the political parties -- some $1-million to the Republicans and $534,000 to the Democrats. Senators presently serving on the Regulated Industries committee accounted for more than $154,000.

The $600-million estimate, quoted fondly by sponsors of the bill, comes from the Legislature's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA for short) as part of top-to-bottom review of the Department of the Lottery. However, the report also expressed reservations that the Legislature would be irresponsible to ignore.

One of them is that the Lottery could lose as much as 25 percent of its present sales to a form of gambling that "because of its rapid play style . . . may be more addictive" and which would extract significantly more money from poor people's pockets. Another is that it would "materially" undermine Florida's legal resistance to wide-open casino gambling on Indian reservations.

The most important objection, of course, is that slot machines would demean Florida's character and disgrace legislators who would rather vote to exploit a vice than to support education with honest taxes.

The bills may not pass, and if they do, Gov. Jeb Bush would likely veto them. But that's no excuse for any legislator to vote yes. "They're going step by step," warned Sen. Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, as he tried to stop a related bill that would let the tracks do more with their presently limited card rooms. It has been 67 years since the Legislature dared to legalize slots and 65 years since that blunder was corrected. To give them an inch this year would have them back next year expecting the mile.

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