Yes, and some non-smokers have no sense of proportion.
I actually agree with both of these comments. Smokers have no idea how bad second hand smoke bothers other people (but that has been largely cured by clean indoor air laws) and some non-smokers seem to have the noses of bloodhounds.
In a free society, it has to be accepted that some people smoke and reasonable accommodations have to be made. I think we’ve gone that way by banning smoking in restaurants and indoor workplaces. To ban it in the home seems too extreme. Living in an apartment means living in close proximity to people and having to put up with a few uncomfortable things.
Unless there is science that second hand smoke that permeates through walls is a health hazard, banning smoking in an apartment home is a step too far.
I always thought the smoke was getting in through the ventilation system, not straight through the walls. An apartment I used to live in got filled with smoke from a neighbor. It was awful.
In that case, the fact that smoking was allowed was explicitly mentioned before I moved in. Even though I hate smoke, I can’t really see the argument for banning apartments from being advertized as “smokers.”
Here’s the proportion: If I can smell it, you’re invading my living space. I don’t care if it’s cigarette smoke, or cat litterbox funk, or your weird chemistry experiments.
Your smell is not allowed in my living space. If it is, you are being a nuisance on my property.
But by living in an apartment building, you have conceded some invasion of your living space. You hear people coming and going, stumbling drunk up the stairs, playing music, or having loud sex.
If someone is a smoker, it seems draconian to pass a law saying that he can’t smoke in his own home. We’ve all seen what happens next. You make them go outside to smoke and cigarette butts are on the grounds and you bitch about that. Then you (the general you non-smoker) bitch because you have to walk through a cloud of smoke on the way to your car.
So then smoking gets banned on the property.
Anti-smoking laws are the perfect example of why the slippery slope argument is not always a bad one. It started with the idea that non-smokers should have a section to sit on airplanes and in restaurants where they could not be around smoke.
It’s come from that to some colleges banning smoking in all outdoor areas of campus.
I don’t think it should be like 1970 with smoking in hospitals, but there has to be a rational balance. Banning smoking in a home crosses that line.
Hey thats my cooking you are talking about!
(cooking shrimp? :eek:)
I think the difficulty here arises around whether “bad smells” are harmful and should be dealt with legally, or whether it’s actual smoke or particles, which do have real health negatives…pretty fine line I feel.
I’ve been anti-tobacco since I was a kid…structured my life to avoid it as much as possible (too many tales to mention)I live in California, and the change in 30 years has been WONDERFUL!! I can go out to restaurants now!!!..but this does have a funny slippery slope feel.
I think jtagain’s mention of balance reflects my own…I have zero idea how that could be implemented in apartments tho…
Seems like a great opening for a new type of cigarette etc…looks like smoke, tastes like smoke, but isnt smoke.
ok my first post in GD, excuse the whatevers!
But you see, that slope leads us to where we want to be, living longer and stench-free.
My point is that I don’t care if you smoke on the property or in your house–I care if I can smell your smoke. Apartment living involves some reasonable concessions–in this town, in general, both apartment management and the police take noise complaints seriously, and people learn to keep it to a reasonable level and no one has any problems.
And I’d be just as happy with the reversed-equivalent law–“Smokers are obligated to keep their smoke out of other people’s homes.”
As I said, I am an occasional smoker. I took great pains to make sure I’m not annoying my neighbors with it–supplemental exhaust fans and such as necessary in the windows, but I never got a word of complaint from my neighbors even when I was smoking a four-hose hookah every other night in my spare room, because I respected other people’s property enough not to stink it up.
And cigarette butts on the ground ARE something to bitch about. I seriously don’t understand the subset of smokers who feel the rest of the world has to accommodate their mess and pollution–if more smokers were like me and the vast majority of smokers I have known, there would be very little anti-smoking legislation because no one would have any cause to bitch.
But there’s always the loud minority for whom it is too much trouble to pick up their butts, and too much trouble to walk five feet out of the main pathway, and too much trouble to make sure their smoke isn’t getting into someone else’s house. You want to blame someone for the draconian laws, blame THEM.
… and to where we don’t want to be, where you can’t eat a cheeseburger because it burdens our healthcare system. In general, I have very little patience for complaints about the “nanny state”, but for me this sort of regulation crosses the line.
Here’s the HUGE difference. If I eat a double-bacon cheeseburger, i endanger no one health but my own. And, that’s my business.
But when you smoke, *you are endangering others. You have no right to do so. *
Hell, use chew or something. Disgusting but you’re business not mine.
The law was passed without showing a health risk. Unless there is a hole in the wall there is little chance of anything dangerous transferring from one apartment to the other in measurable risk form. This can easily be mitigated by sealing baseboards and outlets on the common wall.
If you let the state tell you how to live your life there will be no end to it. We’re already seeing bans on various food and drink and a trip to the airport is turning into a medical exam.
Look at the progressive bans on smoking. It went from airplanes, to offices, to bars, to restaurants, to parks, to connected houses. Apply this mentality to homeland security. The searches started at airports, then truck stops, trains… It’s just a matter of time before we have routine traffic stops similar to those seen now only it will be a strip search of the car.
I hope people start to realize who works for who in a free country before it’s too late. Politicians work for us and not in the capacity of parent.
Why does it have to be a health risk? Why should you have the right to enter MY home with YOUR stench?
Seems to me that you need to get the building code changed if the idea is honestly to prevent odors from crossing between apartments. I smelled cooking odors many times when I lived in apartments. I don’t remember smoke really being an issue.
You don’t know this.
I daresay there’s quite a difference between cooking something and burning something, and while a lousy cook might burn food now and then, it’s not like they do so for a few hours every evening.
Evidence of risk exists, even with low-level secondhand smoke exposure.
*"(in the study) participants’ urine levels of nicotine and cotinine were measured - these are markers of cigarette smoking within the body.
Each participant’s entire genome was scanned to find out which genes were either activated or deactivated in the cell linings of the airways. The researchers discovered that there was no level of nicotine or cotinine that did not also correlate with genetic abnormalities.
Dr. Crystal said: This means that no level of smoking, or exposure to secondhand smoke, is safe."*
The slippery slope argument depends on the claim that once restrictions are placed on a dangerous/unacceptable activity, no limits to regulation are possible. According to this argument, the passing of laws regulating employment and workplace safety beginning a century or more ago must have inevitably led to such extreme restrictions that no jobs remain today - obviously nonsense. The “slippery slope” stops when we reach a consensus and a socially acceptable equilibrium.
Interesting.
Are there other chemicals or substances that are unsafe at any exposure level, or is this only for tobacco smoke?
Again, that’s evidence that secondhand smoke is dangerous, not that smoke can leach through apartment walls. You did offer a study for that earlier, but it seemed to be based on people’s subjective opinion that they smelled smoke in their apartments.
Like we have said: we KNOW we can smell it, and if we can smell it it’s there. It may not have actually come thru the walls, it may have come thru the VENTILATION SYSTEM. .
I’m sure you think you can smell it. However, your subjective belief that you can smell it is not documentary proof.
Do apartments share ventilation systems? I’ve never lived in one that did.