Can playing the lottery draw people's focus away from pursuing realistic goals in their lives?

From http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dangers-irrational-brain

Clearly there is a demand for playing the lottery, and people seem to get something out of it; otherwise they wouldn’t keep playing. But it is well established that low income people spend a higher percentage of their income on the lottery than other income groups.

The finding from our first study, that when you make people feel poor they play more, is especially sad since playing the lottery is on average a massively losing proposition. The propensity of low income individuals to play the lottery has the perverse effect of exacerbating their poverty. Although there are no easy solutions to the problem, one obvious one would be to cease marketing and advertising that targets the poor. It probably makes sense for the state to sell lottery tickets, because otherwise they will be sold by organized crime. However, does it really make sense for the state to be inducing, through advertising, poor people to play who wouldn’t play in the absence of such inducement?

What about your thoughts about the lottery and gambling phenomena?