Applicants who smoke

[Megan Thomson]

One of our quality standards for renters is that they are non-smoking. It says so on our application and applicants need to indicate whether they are non-smoking or not. We just had some prospective tenants turn in applications and they said “non-smokers” on the application, but I noticed they smelled strongly of smoke and even their applications (the paper!) smells like smoke. Can I deny them for this reason even though they said non-smoking?