Four years ago today, North Dakota launched it's own lottery.

At the time only Powerball was available for purchase in the state.  Since then, three new games have been added.

Each one of the North Dakota Lottery's games are run by the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), which is famous for creating the first nation-wide multi-state lottery game, Powerball (formerly Lotto America).  The North Dakota Lottery does not conduct any of the drawings itself.

It's estimated by June 13th of this year, the lottery will net a profit of $28 million, which is distributed to a number of programs throughout the state.

"The lottery's consumer product is a dream," said Chuck Keller, Director of the N.D. Lottery. 

So far more than five million people have won playing the lottery, but regardless if their ticket is a winner or not, they already made a difference.

A percentage of every dollar goes to eight different areas.

The Multi-Jurisdictional Drug Taskforce is one of those eight areas.  $400,000 goes to help North Dakota law enforcement fight the war on drugs.

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said, "It has helped enormously because we have seen a dwindling of the federal participation." The state used to get $2.4 million through the Federal Burn Grant Program.

Stenehjem said the money was used to set up the ten drug taskforce agencies throughout the state.

However, as the years have passed, the amount of federal participation in the Drug Taskforce has dropped to $175,000.