Forget the stock market. Forget home foreclosures. Forget reality.

Visit Las Vegas. And consider Oxford County.

I did both recently -- and I don't like the picture.

Until my trip last month, I had not been to Las Vegas for more than 20 years. In past years, I went to gamble.

Aside from an occasional friendly, very-low-stakes poker game with golf buddies, I don't gamble much any more. I've decided it's foolish to donate my money to casino owners. This trip was to attend an editors' reunion dinner.

Las Vegas today makes the Vegas I remember seem like kindergarten.

Casinos and hotels that didn't exist when I last visited are now the stars of the strip

The Bellagio is a good example. A block-long pool in front of the casino -- illuminated at night, of course -- grabs attention as fountains spray high into the air, the water dancing in time to recorded music serenading the hundreds who gather for the concert every half-hour. Imagine water keeping time to Sinatra or Mozart. In the brash glare of the Las Vegas strip, it seems classy, not tacky.

The Bellagio boasts 3,933 hotel rooms and a casino that stretches the entire block. I got lost walking through it.

Try the Wynn, with 2,715 rooms and a 111,000-square-foot casino. One restaurant includes a dinner show featuring a giant singing frog looming over a waterfall. The Wynn is so successful that owner Steve Wynn is building another hotel and casino next door, appropriately called the Encore.

Visit the MGM Grand, Caesars Palace or the Mandalay Bay -- maybe the most opulent of all. I could continue the superlatives but I think you get the picture.

Many of the old casinos are gone. No more Stardust. The sign remains for the Frontier, calling attention not to a building but to a square block of vacant land where a new casino is about to spring from the ground.

The Riviera remains, a sad seedy reminder of what was once a grand place.

I visited these casinos and many more -- looking, not spending. All were busy, with men and women sliding currency into slot machines. Modern slot machines are mini-computers. You push buttons. Gone are the days of inserting coins and pulling the handle. I guess you can no longer call them one-armed bandits.

There also were men and women at blackjack tables, crap tables and at tables with games I'd never heard of.

Mostly my wife and I watched. We lost about $20 in slot machines. Stupid. I won $20 at the blackjack table. Lucky, but also stupid.

One good bet: $10 on the Red Sox, at even money. They won, so my $10 became $20. We walked away ahead.

These astounding palaces in Las Vegas were built and flourish because people lose millions of dollars in them every year.

The law guarantees that casino owners win. It may be only a small percentage, but in the long run the house always wins -- enough to pay for fountains that keep time to music, for free drinks for gamblers, for low-cost buffet lunches and dinners and for huge profits for the owners.

That's true in Las Vegas, it's true at the slot machine operation in Bangor and it will be true if Maine voters approve a referendum in November to allow a casino in Oxford County.

The fact that nearly all gamblers lose money in casinos is not in itself reason to oppose a casino in Maine. The fact that gambling can be addictive and that casinos tip otherwise honest men and women toward crime to support their gambling habit is.

So are the facts that the profits from the pockets of Mainers would flow out-of-state toward the casino operators and that money spent in casinos could otherwise be used to purchase goods made or sold in Maine, or to pay for food, fuel, clothing or education.

Like all such referendums, the one this November is misleading. It asks voters if they wish "to allow a certain Maine company to have the only casino in Maine" and pledges that some of the revenue would be used for "specific state programs."

That "certain Maine company" would be Olympia Gaming, which proposes a $100 million casino resort. Olympia is financing the public relations campaign in support of the referendum.

It's hard to conceive a company that is less related to Maine. It took over Evergreen Mountain Enterprises, which had proposed the casino, just last month.

Olympia is a Las Vegas company that is building a 100-acre casino resort just off the strip in Vegas.

The proposed referendum is nothing less than a license to allow Olympia to suck money out of Maine.

Sure, some revenue would go to the state. Of course, the project will be promoted as a way to create jobs, support education or do other wonderful things here. But the essence of the plan is to give Olympia a way to lure Mainers, and Bostonians, of course, to empty their pockets and ship money to Las Vegas.

Worse yet, this referendum would allow people under 21 to gamble and work in casinos and allow casinos to extend credit to gamblers who run out of money. I wonder what genius came up with that idea.

A casino was a bad idea when it was proposed by Maine's Indian tribes. It's worse when the idea comes directly from the Las Vegas strip.

David B. Offer is the retired executive editor of the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel. E-mail davidboffer@hotmail.com.