FORT WORTH, Texas – Last week, the Texas Lottery Commission heard from several witnesses in a case involving the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and smoking in stores that sell lottery tickets, the Forth Worth Star-Telegram reports.

In November, the state’s attorney general’s office said that the lottery commission could be violating the ADA because it allowed sales of tickets in stores that permit smoking.

One of the witnesses, Wayne Krause, a staff attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, urged the lottery commission to take away the lottery licenses of stores that permit on-premises smoking because people with severe respiratory ailments risk their health if they go inside to purchase a lottery ticket.

“We would bring that lawsuit against both [a store owner] and the Texas Lottery Commission,” Krause said in his testimony.

The commission said it would take up to two months to think about whether it has the responsibility and the power to yank ticket-selling licenses if the retailer allows smoking.

Sarah Woelk, the commission’s special counsel, said such a restriction could cause retailers who allow smoking to simply stop selling lottery tickets. “That would give no disabled person greater access to lottery tickets,” she said.

Lottery commission staffers pointed out that most Texas’ larger cities already restrict smoking in most public places.

Chris Newton, president of the Texas Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores Association, told the newspaper that banning smoking in places where lottery tickets were sold would have a far-reaching effect, particularly in rural areas that generally allow smoking in public places.

“Right now, we’re polling our membership to get a sense of how big the impact might be,” said Newton. “Obviously, it wouldn’t matter in cities that already regulate smoking, but there are a lot of places, especially in rural parts of the state, where the local convenience store is the gathering place where you’ll find folks sitting down to have a cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette.”

Newton added, “Retailers only net 5 cents on the dollar for each lottery ticket they sell, while the [profit] margin is a considerably more on snacks, soft drinks, beer and cigarettes. … But what we do find is that people who come in to buy a lottery ticket often do leave with some of those other products, and that’s why they continue to sell the lottery tickets.”