You snuck your post in there before I saw it, RTF. I wish I had more time to argue this, or get all worked up over it again, but I don’t want to right now-- I want to go out and drink and have some fun tonight (I think that’s still legal).
Maybe after being around the family tommorrow I’ll come back in with fists of fury. -smile-
But for now, I just wanted to come back and comment on this line-
Come on, RTF, don’t you think it gets to a point that it’s ridiculous?
What happened to resolving these issues face to face, one on one?
Has it become so pathetic that we really need these moralizing, righteous, do-gooding sons-o-bitches coming in and enacting laws and standards for all to follow?
Well mr C. If the goverment does not step in the people can resort to mindless lawsuits. Never saw a “warning coffee is served HOT!” sign before dim wit lady spilled coffee on herself at Mickey D’s and succesfully sued.
I do find it a bit unnerving. Legislation while there for the common good, can get a bit out of hand.
I also wonder, can the smoker then turn around and sue the owner of the building he rents in because it is poorly designed and in effect the true culprit in the Non-smokers discomfort? Would there be a legal claim for claiming"I am a average pack a day smoker, the building design has caused this issue, not my normal and average smoking habit."
Also what would the finacial ramnifications be for the goverment if everyone were to stop smoking?
Cite? Citey mcCite? Having been personally and recently visited upon by a stupid “nuisance” law, and having experienced dozens of them in my time, I cannot think of a single one where a simple, human to human encounter would not have resulted in an improved situation for all. And, no matter how hard I think, I cannot think of a single meaningful example of less government being worse government.
Apartment Dweller: Dang, the neighbor’s smoke is really bugging me. Let’s see: Should I go next door, ask him about the smoke, perhaps contact my landlord, maybe even do something about the smell myself? Nah, I’ll do the cowardly thing. Rather than take the chance that my neighbor has a legitimate right to do in his home what he pays the rent for, namely, to live as he chooses, or take some action to remedy the situation myself in a human and humane manner, I’ll lobby to get a law passed by the local legislature to prohibit this guy from living his life the way he sees fit. never mind that tons of alternatives are open to me. Never mind that I have the power to do something about this myself, I want the GOVERNMENT to step in and solve my problem for me.
Not here, thanks. I don’t live like that. Those who do deserve what they get, which is, as Montfort so eloquently stated, “The People’s Republic of Maryland”.
And RTF, If I swing, my fist stops when it makes contact. The people who swing without intent to hit, are the cause of this inanity. Never draw a weapon unless your very next act is using it, be it fist, firearm, fart, or fire. Living where people swing at you but don’t hit you is unwise, but should never be illegal.
Aside from all that: You have utterly and completely missed the point. Where you and I are involved,it is no longer a matter of my personal life, it is a matter of public behavior and there are set, and usually pretty good, rules for public behavior. What I do in my home, on my property, in private, is none of your, or anyone else’s, business. Ever. Never, never ever. Least of all the government. Ah, that’s right, you gave another example: Let’s see, mowing at 4:00 AM. Hmmmmmmm… DINGDINGDING!!! Public behavior. Affecting more than one person, perhaps a neighborhood. Not private behavior, like smoking. Or spanking your monkey. Or strutting around the house in a suit made entirely of meat. Or cheese. Or dryer lint. Or eating box after box of chocolate covered cherries. After all, that’s what we’re discussing here, private behavior.
This is one time I am on the side of the ACLU. What you do in your home or apartment, is your business. However I do think apartments should place smoking flats on the top floor.
When I used to step outside of my SO apartment to smoke, the smell from the bottom floor was awful. I was never sure if it was the brand of cig, or an air freshener or what, but damn it was bad.
Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons!
~And I know I wasn’t right, but it felt so good… -Better Than Ezra
CnoteChris: Dammit, you beat me to the punch. I was gonna start this thread. I even had a thread title worked out, guess I’ll just have to use it as my post subject. I need to get off work earlier.
I think I have pretty good argument (in addition to those already stated in this thread) why this virtually guaranteed law is unfair to smokers in Maryland, or at least an argument that hasn’t already been stated in this thread. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the cites I needed and I have to work in the morning (Thanksgiving; bit of advice: don’t work in a grocery store if you like having time off around the holidays), so I promise to revisit this thread when I find what I’m looking for.
As a relatively recent non-smoker (last cigarette: September 9, 2000), my knee jerk reaction to this was: You have GOT to be fucking kidding me, right? Completely unreasonable.
But then, the non-smoker in me piped up: Well, you know how completely disgusting, even nauseating you find cigarette smoke now…imagine if the guy next door or beneath you smoked so much that it filled your aparment? Wouldn’t you be pretty unhappy? Would you think it fair that you had to endure something so irredeemably repulsive, not to mention dangerous to your health?
So I guess the two cents are divided…one penny thinks it’s unreasonable, the other one thinks it’s understandable.
My biggest concern, I guess, is that one’s neighbor might unreasonably complain, just as a form of harassment if that neighbor didn’t like you.
But in the big picture, I’m grateful for the laws and social pressures agaianst smokers, they had not a little to do with my quitting, and I’m sure they’ve had a great deal to do with the fact that the numbers of smokers vs. non in this country have flipped upside down. And that’s a great, great thing. (Used to be around 75% of people smoked, now 75% of people don’t.)
If there’s a lot of smoke drifting into one apartment for another I don’t think we can blame the smoker. It seems to me that the majority of the fault would lie in the apartment itself. Maybe the ventiliation isn’t what it should be. I’ve been in a townhouse where you could detect the faint odor of tobacco smoke when the neighbor puffed up.
I don’t really see how they’re going to enforce this law in houses. Or even if someone decides they want to smoke in their backyard. I’m a fairly militant anti-smoker myself. But if my neighbor was out back smoking it wouldn’t bother me.
**
Except in extreme cases I think most of it will be harassment. I’d argue that none of us has the right to never ever smell tobacco smoke. Can the vegetarian next door sue me because he can’t stand the smell coming from my smoker that’s been going for the past 8 hours?
Although I don’t like smoking those laws do bother me a bit. I wonder what will happen if the government can no longer count on tax revunue generated by tobacco sales? Don’t be surprised if you see a twinkie or a Coca-Cola with a .50 cent fat tax added on. I’ve already read a few articles saying that government should go after fat just like they did tobacco.
As an ex smoker, but not too far ex (4-16-2001, yes Income Tax day), I initially rebelled also. However, I don’t know the area, so I really can’t say. If what the article reported was true, and I’ve no reason to believe it isn’t, and the ACLU gets involved, I believe the law is headed for the courts. Most courts will usually hold up a law for enforcement until the case is settled, so I doubt if the smokers have too much to worry about at the present time.
I am a citizen of the Peoples Republic of California, and I know that as much money as was thrown at the ‘War on Smoking’ in this state, it still isn’t that smoke-free. Many people I know still smoke but order their smokes from Indian tribes or some other cheap place. I just couldn’t see that and cigs were getting up to 3.00 a pack and I figured it was time to quit. I think about 2.80 of that 3.00 was taxes for this or that. They collected so much money for taxes here at first, people were fighting over how to spend it. Meathead’s last campaign was ‘for the children’ don’t you know, and I think that was .50 per pack. There’ve been so many tax ‘initiatives’ and laws and this and that that I’ve lost track. I think Meathead’s was the last one, but not real sure. Anyhow, in the last year the taxes have dropped (not the rate, just the amount coming in) that people are getting frantic. What, no more terbaccy tax money, WHAT WILL THE CHILDREN DO???
Heh, funny enough China has widespread smoking, and there are essentially no restrictions on smoking apart from obvious no-smoking zones. In fact, people in California are probably subject to many times more laws (including silly laws) than people anywhere in China, which just goes to show you where the road of foolishness will get you.
I appeal to people to stop it with the whole “might as well be China” phrase. When it comes to freedom I can’t think of a single country who can keep her head high. I mean, after this discussion I am tempted to pull out the phrase “might as well be living in California”!
Yeppers. Regulation certainly can be taken too far.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got limited time, energy, and patience for resolving issues face to face, one on one, with relative strangers; I’d rather save my emotional reserves to be lavished on my family and friends.
As things progress, old conflicts come up repeatedly - and after awhile, a consistent set of case law emerges regarding those conflicts, from where those involved weren’t able to settle things face to face. And once that point is reached, you have a rule, for all practical purposes. Only if someone is breaking it to your detriment, you’ve got to get a lawyer and go to court if the offender isn’t willing to listen to reason. So they turn it into a law, and rich and poor alike have access to it, and there’s agreement on what the rule is, even though some disagree as to what it should be.
Also as things progress, new areas of conflict continue to arise, and we still have to resolve those, face to face, one on one, because there are no rules yet, and no clear guidance yet for making rules. That never goes away, and it’s never going to go away.
If we didn’t periodically make rules to deal with conflicts that came up repeatedly, we’d drown in situations that we needed to resolve, one on one. And more of these one-on-one disagreements would inevitably have winners and losers, with the winners being the party capable of being more nettlesome to the other without actually engaging in behavior that could land them in jail.
We’re not talking about some faceless ‘they’, here, but the county council, which will quickly find themselves out on their asses if they enact a bunch of ordinances that people don’t like.
Geez, haven’t we settled that one to everybody’s satisfaction already?
I mean, the Mickey D’s coffee suit is famous on this board - not as an outrageous example of abuse of our legal system, but as an example of how one’s superficial impression of an issue can be quite misleading.
Anyone in there, McFly? I’ve given you a pretty good hypothetical example of the sort of thing that you know quite well is repeated numerous times in our laws. But since you asked…noise ordinances, speed limits, laws against open fires in towns and other built-up areas, laws against discharging firearms in same, except in self-defense…want me to go on?
Yeah, I read that thread. According to Billy Rubin,
So the problem here didn’t seem to be the law, but the woman across the street.
To quote Billy Rubin, “Cite? Citey mcCite?”
See my response to Cnote Chris, above.
Then rebutting the example I gave shouldn’t tax your brain.
Can we say “whoosh”?
But to take up your point, people who swing without intent to hit, who you claim “are the cause of this inanity”, are exactly the ones who are not safe to deal with, face to face, one on one. If the downstairs neighbor’s stereo is playing so loud that I can’t hear my own stereo over the noise, let’s say I go down to resolve it, FTF. He shakes his fist under my nose, and tells me the next time I complain about anything, he’ll bust my nose. Your solution?
Buahahahahaha!!
Well, let’s see what the point is; that’s more important than who missed it.
If what I do on my private property (e.g. mowing the lawn at 4am) affects you while you’re on your private property, like you say, the line has been crossed into public behavior. I thank you for your lucid exposition of this point.
The subject of this thread is exactly such a situation: person A is smoking so heavily that his smoke is seeping into person B’s residence. There is a legitimate question of whether the actual regulation goes too far. But by your own logic, it’s public behavior, negatively affecting another person. Like you say, the notion that rules can and frequently should apply to this class of situation is fundamentally legitimate.
To get an idea of how insane these anti-smoking laws can go: In Boulder about 5-6 years ago (no cite,sorry) they passed a no-smoking in public places law. Which was, IMHO dumb, but not unreasonable.
Until…the Boulder Dinner Theater was putting on a production of…um…something…Grand Hotel? Caberet? Anyway it was a period piece set in the late-20’s/early-30’s and one or two scenes involved people lighting up (dialogue was a part of the scenes “Can you give a girl a light” or words to that effect, so they couldn’t have just not smoked without changing the dialogue).
The Boulder smoking police came in and tried to shut the theater down for “smoking violations”. The Theater first offered to try clove cigarettes, until the actors refused, saying they were more disgusting than the tobacco ones, and the Smoking Police refused, saying that smoking was smoking.
Finally the Theater screamed (rightly, IMHO) that their First Ammendment rights were being violated. The ACLU got involved (on the Theater’s side, o’ course). I don’t recall for sure how it came out, but I think the Theater won.
** Go on what? Go on quoting examples of Public behavior? We’re discussing a law about a private individual smoking in his/her ** own home.** You cannot cite a single example of a law which intrudes into a person’s *private life *which isn’t asinine. And the anti-smoking legislation presented here is on the forefront of intrusion into people’s private lives, and as such, should be stopped before it moves another step forward.
**
Good! Now you’re getting it. The problem wasn’t the law in this case, though it was a stupid law, the problem was that a HUMAN chose not to interact with another HUMAN and instead chose to call the LAW. Hello? anyone IN THERE?
Yeah, I saw that:
**
So you’re saying, you clearly choose to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
**No. Rebutting an example you’ve given is about as taxing as sharpening a pencil. However, finding a meaningful example you’ve posited in this thread is what’s difficult, as it doesn’t exist.
**
**why yes, we can!
Oh, yeah, then, of course, you’re exactly right, we shouldn’t even attempt anything else, we should just automatically make a law against shaking your fist. Let’s not bother to contact the landlord. Let’s not bother to talk to anyone else. Let’s just knee-jerk another useless stupid law onto the books.
Er, maybe you have a reading issue. Revisit the part where I say
Please explain how the construction of an apartment building which allows smoke to enter from one apartment to another is the fault of the smoker? this is a clear violation of the building code anywhere I’ve lived. All of which is moot because the law clearly refers to any residence, so explain to me further how smoke from my house can get into yours? That’s really bad construction.
The thing is Billy, every single one of your arguments can also be applied to noise nuisance.
For example:
[li]You produce your noise in your own house, so it is none of my business.[/li][li]If I can hear your noise, my walls must be too thin. It’s the landlord’s fault.[/li]
Now what I want to know is: do you approve of noise ordinances? If not, then am I supposed to just put up with your racket disturbing me all day in my home? What if you refuse to turn it down?
Being a smoking (in more ways than one)Northern California girl myself, I am no stranger to harsh smoking laws. I drove cross country once and upon entering a resteraunt, was asked “smoking or non?” I just stared blankly, not quite sure how to respond. No smoking in resteraunt laws have been around ever since I can remember. In turn, when I was a hostess in a resteraunt and someone would walk in and ask to be in the smoking section, I’d have no choice but to laugh and say “you’re not from California are you?”
Laws are so harsh here in fact, they really do make someone feel like a criminal for smoking. Even when i’m outside (those outdoor laws haven’t hit us up here yet) I won’t light up if i’m within 20 feet of anyone else, as to not offend. There is one resteraunt out here that you actually can smoke on the patio, but forget that. The tables are no more than a foot away from one another, i’m not going to be blowing smoke in someone’s face as they’re trying to enjoy their veggie tacos. When I smoke in my car I make sure it’s not until I’m on the freeway or something so the smoke doesn’t drift into the car next to me.
So are you then saying that even after being this conciencous of non-smokers, I can’t even go to my own home on a rainy day and sneak in a cig before bed? Are the smoking police going to leap out of the bushes and “take me down?” Am I going to be fingerprinted and thrown in a jail cell, for no more than trying to enjoy a Marlboro Light? Maybe the jail thing was a little much but comon, 750 fine? That’s crazy. It’s far less for littering.
So you’re saying that I can’t smoke closer than 20 feet from a building, in a resteruant, in a bar, or in my own home? So uh, I guess I’ll be heading to that empty field whenever I get a niccotine craving then.
If you’re living in an apartment, the only thing from the smoker next door that can get into your apartment would be the smell I would imagine. I’ve lived in apartments before and sure, in the HALLWAY you can smell the cabbage and insense and whatever else but as soon as I closed my door it was all good.
I can’t see how actual SMOKE would get into your apartment unless you have some dangerously thin walls, in which you shouldn’t be living there anyway. Unless of course it’s throught the window, in which case, shut the damn window. It only takes 5 minutes to smoke a ciggarette and unless your window is 3 inches from your neighbors, that shouldn’t be a problem either. So then there is no actual DANGER, just an offending smell. So how is that different from Mrs. Jone’s boiling her cabbage?
The funny thing is up here you can legally smoke pot in your home. As long as the goods aren’t divided up (intent to sell) So I can light up a joint in here, but not a ciggarette? HYSTERICAL…
Actually, lezlers, noone is saying that you can’t smoke a cigerette in your own home. They are saying that if you do it to the extent that your neighbour’s home fills up with smoke, you’re doing it too much.
As you say, it isn’t at all easy to get smoke into a neighbour’s apartment. So there shouldn’t be any problem, should there?
Noise, like smoke, is a perceived issue. The amount of smoke a person finds objectionable and the amount of noise a person finds objectionable are subjective. However, noise can still travel through a properly constructed building, wheras smoke cannot. It is possible to construct a building that dampens noise. It is illegal (anyplace I know) to construct a building which has a communication between apartments through which smoke can pass. I understand the analogy, but as applied here it loses relevance. As to noise ordinances which prohibit people from driving cars with 50,000,000 watt stereos through my residential streets? Public policy, public behavior. Seems pretty straightforward to me.