Dr Ralph Thompson, the businessman, lawyer and education reform activist, has thrown the Jamaican Government a lifeline on casino gaming.

As former US ambassador to Jamaica Gary Cooper suggested in the middle of the last decade, Dr Thompson has suggested that Jamaica should introduce casinos and use the taxes from the sector to finance education.

When Mr Cooper made those remarks, he received substantial flak and he did, too, for pointing to the increasing pollution of the Jamaican north shore and the negative impact this could have on tourism.

However, things have changed somewhat since Mr Cooper's time - we think. At least with respect to entertaining debates on controversial issues, particularly about the merits, or lack thereof, of casino gaming.

The Church, insofar as we can assume that there is any such monolith, no longer has a monopoly on any such discussion. The rest of the society is unlikely, these days, to cower in fear of fire and brimstone, and governments are likely to find more courage in dealing with the issue of gambling.

Dr Thompson, too, has provided the Government with a specific peg on which to hang a policy permitting casinos which the moralists will find hard to reject, unless they are the most ardent absolutists.

When Mr Cooper spoke he did so largely from the gut and the growing sense that all of us had that things that were bad and were getting worse.

Dr Thompson has the benefit of empirical evidence, hard data - of the low mean scores of grade six students and the fact that at grade four not much than a third of the children master the literacy and numeracy components of the assessment tests. Or, the fact that hardly more than 10 per cent of the cohort pass at least five subjects at the CXC secondary school exams in a single sitting.

The education system is in need of overhaul, and a government task force has projected that it will need $520 billion over the next decade.

We believe that this is an investment that Jamaica will have to afford.

There is, in our view, no greater moral value to a society than providing it with education, and therefore the capacity of its members to become productive citizens capable of intelligently sifting opinions and ideas on which they can make more informed decisions.

If the taxes from casinos, as Dr Thompson has suggested, is one way to help find the cash for this kind of investment, more power to casinos.

But even outside of an idea of a dedicated use of the income from casinos, this newspaper has long argued that introducing them to Jamaica just makes good economic sense.

Allowing casinos, it is clear, will help to drive further investment in tourism, which will generate new jobs and promote growth, which will help to provide the Government with the surplus for a variety of social and other investment, including in education, health care and the infrastructure.

For those who made a moral case against casinos, they will forgive us if we, like many others, view them as relativists who accommodate themselves to other forms of gambling while being fervent against shooting crap or playing poker at tables in some fancy hall.

Indeed, the lack of casino gaming has not made Jamaica any less corrupt or reduced the murder rate. The latter is likely to happen when people are better educated and more of them have jobs.

Casinos - listen to Dr Thompson - can help on both counts. What's more, the argument is compelling.

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