Hot gambling industry in Washington State in 1960s

Estimates of gross gambling profits for the state are thus uncertain, but some claimed they ranged from $50 to $100 million per year in the sixties. By comparison, Boeing's net earnings for 1965 were $78 million. Washington stood out in the United States for its levels of gambling, at least on paper. The federal government required gambling operators to buy federal gambling stamps and pay gambling revenues [sic—should it be pay tax on gambling revenues?]. In other parts of the country, doing so exposed gamblers to arrest for violationof local laws. In Seattle, that wasn't a problem, and in 1961 approximately one-third of all wagering stamps purchased in the country were bought in Washington.

Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2015), ch. 2.