It's hard to know whether $10 is a lot of money these days for the average 10-year-old to shell out for something.

Maybe $10 is not a steep price if the purchase gives the kid a chance to win a pile of cash by gambling.

The smallest pack of bingo cards offered by the Dakota Skies Bingo Hall in Bismarck costs $10.

That 10-year-olds are approved to gamble in North Dakota is unacceptable. You can dress it up with the name, "charitable gaming," but that doesn't change what it is. It's gambling.

Charitable gaming?

Pictionary is a game.

And charity is what moves a person to sit down and write out a check to the North Dakota Association for the Disabled. Charity is its own reward when it comes from altruism. Charity has no part in that same association's motive for opening its doors to 10-year-olds and everyone else to enter and gamble. It's money-making.

Those who go to the bingo parlor in Bismarck aren't there to make a charitable contribution to Prairie Public Broadcasting. They go, partly to socialize but more in the hope of winning something, a prize, a big jackpot.

It is not responsible for the same folks who bring Sesame Street to kids during the day to teach 10-year-olds to gamble in the evening.

Adults can take their own responsibility for doing pulltabs, playing blackjack, buying lottery tickets or going to a casino for some really big-time gambling. Adult responsibility also should include not bringing 10-year-olds to a bingo place.

It is a strange thought - of 10- or 11-year-olds hitting big jackpots in bingo and having to file federal tax returns on their winnings. Equally as bizarre is that they would have to fill out the line on the return declaring their losses.

There is no good reason for them to be gambling.

A couple of lawmakers told the Tribune's Tom Rafferty that the issue of children gambling should be taken up in the next session of the Legislature. The lawmakers will have to set the appropriate age at which young people are allowed to play.

In the meantime, there is nothing in the world to prevent bingo parlors from taking the initiative on their own to set a reasonable age standard.