A confession up front: I’m a gambler.

I’ve been in fantasy football leagues for years. My $25 wager always goes bad somewhere around Week 14 with my go-to running back’s hamstring. I’m an easy mark for NCAA brackets and bowl pools, too.

That just about does it, though. Casinos? No, thanks. If in Vegas, I wouldn’t be at the blackjack tables. I’d be at the buffet tables.

Yes, just about everybody gambles — bingo, PTA raffles. The state sponsors gambling — lotto, horse racing.

So, what are we doing busting poker games? Why the Elliott Ness act on game rooms with eight-liners?

The fact is, Texas continually is in search of a good explanation.

My best explanation is that I don’t want a casino next door, in this county, or in the next county. Casinos are germy incubators of social pathogens — crime, despair, hucksterism for the witless. Casino operators will make a buck for themselves and others, including state and local governments. But making a buck off a germy vice never has made it a virtue.

Still, how to be consistent when you gamble, I gamble, we all gamble?

This subject is raised again (as it will be till the end of time or the legalizing of gambling), with a bill before the Texas Legislature to legalize poker.

Granted, one can set up a game right now anywhere, as long as the house — say the VFW hall or the Elks — doesn’t take a cut from the winnings. If it does, the G-men may be knocking.

The solution proposed is that the state legalize poker and start taking its own cut. I’d say the solution is only half right.

Which will it be?

The state needs to decide whether poker is (a) not its concern, or (b) should continue to be its concern. Unfortunately, the answer proposed is (c) people playing poker aren’t our concern, but we want some of the money.

Hence, under option (c), we become investors in the enterprise. In effect, we become the “house.”

So, my vote: (a) Legalize poker, all of it. If someone is making money off it, let that be a matter between the proprietor and the Internal Revenue Service.

Now, I just said I supported legalized poker but not casinos. I also wondered about the contradiction of busting up eight-liner parlors when the state sponsors a lottery and gambling on horses.

How can we have legalized gambling without the contagion of casinos?

Here’s how: If you want to have poker at your place, and take a cut, the revenue derived should be between you and the IRS. If you operate eight-liners, the same. If you have blackjack tables, ditto.

But if you want any combination of the above, you’ve crossed into a diversified gambling operation, with resulting profit, and it becomes the state’s business to shut it down. That’s because Texas doesn’t want to be in the casino business. I couldn’t agree more.

Back to the state getting a cut from gambling winnings of any kind. It should muster the courage to say no.

The Texas lottery was a mistake. Just as opponents said, it exploited the poor and fueled addiction.

The dollars from the lottery simply allowed scofflaw legislators to dodge their duty of funding things the state needs. Originally designated for the general fund, about a decade ago lottery proceeds were dedicated to schools. That didn’t mean more money for schools. Indeed, it meant less money when proceeds go down, as they have recently.

Texas schoolchildren to the Texas Lottery: Thanks for nothing.

Texas should get out of gambling wherever possible. By that I mean two things: (1) Stop profiting from it (pull the plug on the Texas Lottery); (2) Stop prohibiting it unless one game breeds others on site and it ultimately turns into Atlantic City. Then it should be the state’s business to close it.

If I want to blow my $25 on a fantasy football draft, it’s my money. If my friend wants to blow it on poker, it’s his. Under the laws as now enforced, only the latter endeavor will land someone in the pokey.

John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.