Hawaii, as we all know, is one of only two states (the other is Utah) that prohibits legalized gambling — even though there is illegal gambling in the islands and we love to Go Vegas.

The Hawaii State Legislature has repeatedly rejected casinos, lotteries and the like, even if a cut of the profits were to be directed to state coffers. There have even been proposals to permit gaming at the Hawaii Convention Center.

The main arguments against gaming are that the social impact — crime and bankruptcy, for example — would be to costly.

Well, a new study offers some insight into just how useful — or not — casinos are to counties.

A research team at the University of Nevada, Reno, looked at all U.S. county data from 1987 to 2007, a time when the number of states that legalized gambling grew from two to 33.

Among the findings, as summarized by Journalist’s Resource from the Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, are these:

“The researchers did not find that opening casinos improved the fiscal condition of the counties. However, when a positive effect of commercial casinos was found, it was primarily through revenue sharing legislation. In these cases, local laws mandated states to share revenues from casino taxes with counties. For these states, the opening of casinos increased the sales tax revenues by more than 75 percent and increased revenues and expenditures by more than 11 percent and 12 percent respectively.”

The authors added, however, that “Whether the increase in county expenditures is due to the social impacts of casinos and increased demand for public services or simply governments spending their additional revenue cannot be determined with our data but is a subject worthy of further exploration.”

The study compares the impact of commercial casinos and Indian casinos, too. The graphic accompanying this story shows Indian casinos in pink, commercial ones on blue and both in yellow.