Lottery continues through pandemic

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Lottery continues through pandemic

People can’t take their kids to a playground, hike some trails at Pisgah National Forest or visit businesses deemed non-essential, but the North Carolina Education Lottery continues to be played.Get more news about 彩票API,you can vist loto98.com

That is much to the dismay of a manager of a convenience store near Valdese who wished to remain anonymous.

“It’s so frustrating,” she said. “We feel, me and my girls, we’re risking our lives so you can win five bucks. It’s not fair to us.”She said the people she has seen buying lottery tickets now are the same ones who bought them before the pandemic, but they buy more of them.

“It’s a lot of older people on disability or social security, the ones that really should be staying home,” she said. “They’ll come in, buy a couple of lottery tickets, walk out to their car, scratch them, come right back in and they will do this for an hour and a half.”

With new limits on how many people can be in retail stores at once, she said those in-and-out customers are taking up space that could be someone buying essential items.“There’s a stay-at-home order,” she said. “You should only be out buying essential items. Lottery is not essential.”

Van Denton, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Education Lottery, said the lottery has stopped advertisements and much of its marketing efforts in response to COVID-19.“We don’t want to encourage someone to make a trip to a store just to buy a lottery ticket,” Denton said in an email to The News Herald.

Denton said the lottery would support the decision of any stores to stop selling lottery tickets.

“If stores decide it is in the best interest of their employees, customers, and the community they serve to suspend lottery ticket sales at this time, the lottery will respect that decision,” Denton said in an email.

All six of the lottery claim centers have been closed since March 23, and winners are encouraged to mail in their prize claims, according to a press release from the lottery. Visits by lottery sales representatives to lottery retail locations were stopped March 19.

“Just like all other state agencies, the lottery also is striving to continue operations to meet its mission, raising money for education programs,” the release said. “The money raised this year is needed for education programs that are depending on those funds this year.”

Locally, during the 2019 fiscal year, the lottery provided $5,201,352 to Burke County for education. That included more than $3 million for non-instructional support, $859,782 for school construction and $935,658 that gave 178 Burke County students access to preschool for free, according to the lottery website.

The lottery also said its sales help retailers’ bottom lines.

An owner of a convenience store near Hildebran told reporters Wednesday that his store makes about 7 percent of lottery sales. When all is said and done, that ends up being about $700 per month that the store gets to keep.