And I get migraines from incense, air freshener, and pot - and cigarette smoke. Neighbors turning the stairwell into a large bong (assuming this isn’t an exaggeration) would create an unliveable situation for me. Incense is far worse than the others.
Holy moley. Anyone here find the hypocrisy in the peaceful friendly green bud loving Dopers in here who have the “live and let live, duuuuuuude” attitude, yet don’t want the OP’er to live in peace?
You want me to live and let live while I A) am athesmatic but apparently my health and rights are meaningless if they infringe in any way upon the (apparently) god-given rights of The Tokemeisters in 3B, and B) Get stoned when in my own apartment because of the sheer volume of pot smoke filling the hallways?
Please. :rolleyes: Hey I have a really boss neato gnarly idea. How about if adults living in an apartment building are actually allowed to enter the building, move up the stairs and into their own place of residence without partaking of The Most Holy Bud ?
Imagine. :dubious:
Were it me, I’d stop by the local 7-11 and use the payphone in the parking lot and dime 'em out. Drugs frequently go with Guns like Kookla went with Fran and Ollie and I don’t need a pissed off stoned neighbor shoving a Glock in my kids face. Anonymous tips are a gift sometimes.
Some drugs might go with guns…pot ain’t one of them.
If you wanna narc, that’s one thing, but don’t tell yourself you’re doing it becuase you’re scared of them having firearms in the apartment.
I’ll put in another vote for a note. Mention that the hallway fills with smoke everytime they smoke and ask them to get a window fan. A friend of mine used one of these in his dorm room. We had no smoking dorms. I’ll bet, with all the traffic in and out of that room, over two packs of cigarettes and probably atleast a 1/2 oz of pot was smoked in that little dorm room every day. You couldn’t smell a thing from the hall way. The trick is NOT to put a towel under the door, you need the fan to be able to pull the air into the room.
So, I would write a note…Please do something about the smell in the hallway, open a window, use a fan, go outside, take a drive, stop doing it, etc etc etc. And leave it at that. If it didn’t stop after a few days, then I would call the landlord.
I’ve smoked my share of pot, and have no problem with the next guy doing it to his hearts content. But I, too, would get annoyed if I had to walk through a cloud of it everyday. I’d also be kind of embarresed if people were coming over to my apartment and they had to walk though it.
One more thing, do you know these people, or what kind of people they are? If you’re lukcy, they’ll be the type of people that will read the letter and their hearts will stop for a second when they realize that all the smoke is drifting out there. Then they’ll most likely clean up their act real quick. OTOH, it they’re the type that don’t care what other people think, the type that almost go out of their way to make sure other people know, it may be a bit harder to fix.
- Note: “I’ve got a few friends who are cops. They come over now and then for dinner or whatnot. Last time they stopped by, they asked me who the new pothead in the building was. They pointed out the cloud of smoke in the stairwell and the odor emanating from your apartment. Word of advice: figure out a way to avoid making my apartment and the stairwell smell like weed.” I wouldn’t recommend a specific method of covering up the odor.
If that doesn’t work:
- Note to landlord: “The people in 3B are burning something that stinks. I think it’s pot. Please address this problem forthwith. It’s interfering with my quiet enjoyment of my apartment.”
If that doesn’t work:
- Call cops.
Frankly, I think it’s largely irrelevant that we’re talking about pot. I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass what the cause is; they’re smoking up and stinking up the common areas. I’d knock on the door and say "Excuse me, I’m not sure what you’re doing in there . . . " – I can get away with this because I’m a staid-looking 38 year old woman – “. . . but it is really making the stairway smell bad and it’s also affecting my [fictional] asthma. I wondered if you could maybe take it outside? Or I can ask the landlord about improving the ventilation in the stairwell.” They will correctly take that last part as a threat to involve the landlord.
No improvement, call your landlord, and send him a letter Gfactor suggests.
I wasn’t going to mention this, but a major reason that I don’t just go “bro out” with them and talk to them is that they’re thuggish black guys; my first experience with them was the one guy standing outside the building screaming “nigger nigger” into his cell phone.
What Gfactor said.
And to those whose thinking is along the lines of “It’s just pot, people. Think of it as smelly alcohol; they’re not hurting anybody” and “Narc to the cops? On people just smoking weed in their apartment? That’s totally fascist,” if you get past your defensive reaction to any criticism of pot-smoking, you’ll see that the OP’s complaint is not about someone enjoying pot but about the smell that is permeating a shared area. It’s not “just smoking weed,” it’s stinking up the place and if not “hurting” at least aggravating the hell out of others unnecessarily. Not that involving the police should be the first step, but if it turns out that’s what it takes to get these clowns to stop polluting a bunch of folks’ living space, so be it.
Yeah, I just want to make it clear that I’m (literally) a card-carrying member of NORML and everything - I just don’t want a stinking shithole when I’m trying to carry the groceries in.
I think Gfactor’s advice, which closely parallels your initial thought, is your best option.
Clearly, you’re thinking of Phish when you should be thinking of Snoop Dogg. Pot and guns go together like peas and carrots in some subcultures. 
If they were people I felt were not scary or dangerous to me, for whatever reason, I’d probably just let them know they were stinking up the hallway and could they maybe fix it inside so that this didn’t happen. Just like if they were playing loud music.
If they are people who I am afraid of, I’d probably start with an anonymous note. Polite, non-judgmental, saying the same thing as above.
If they persist and maybe even escalate, next stop is the police.
I don’t mind pot but if they’re stinking up the place with pot or ethnic cooking or paint stripper, they’re affecting me and I’m not gonna put up with that for very long.
Tibidabo is right… passing through a cloud of smoke on the stairwell is not going to expose you to enough THC to worry about testing positive on a drug screen.
If you don’t feel comfortable talking to these guys, I would recommend the anonymous note --> landlord course of action. I wouldn’t take it to the point of involving the cops because 1) I wouldn’t want it on my conscience that I inflicted severe legal consequences on someone just for smelling up my stairwell and 2) if the landlord was told about the situation and didn’t deal with it, I would take that as a sign that I didn’t really want to live there anyway.
And if you get past your reaction to bust a couple of weed smokers, you’ll see that we’re advocating a reasonable, peaceful solution that, in our experience, would resolve the issue to everyone’s satisfaction.
Yes, yes, I know that’s letting the terrorists win, but I thought I’d throw it out there anyway.
I would let the landlord know and if that didn’t fix the situation I’d call the cops. My initial instinct would be to call the cops, but I can see letting the landlord handle it first.
Then I go straight back to my suggestion that you contrive a reason to call the landlord and have him come to your apartment. I suggested messing with the toilet because a> Many people can’t fix it themselves or don’t have a clue and thus call the landlord, and b> If he won’t come, you can easily fix it yourself.
If you get heat for calling the landlord, look confused and say “I was having problems with my toilet. What do you want me to do?”
Good thing he only said it twice. I hear if you say it three times, David Howard appears out of thin air.
Yeah, but pot is a smell that clings and maybe the OP doesn’t feel like walking around smelling like old gym socks all day (maybe it’s just me, but a lot of pot smells like a dirty gym bag. I will never understand people that like the smell- seriously. And yes, I’ve been around people smoking “the good shit”- it still smells disgusting and I’d be really irritated if some asshole made my entire apartment building smell like that).
Like others have said, he has a right to have a stink free apartment building, since that’s what he pays for. It wouldn’t be a problem if the neighbors contained their foulness within their space, but they aren’t.
They let black guys rent apartments in your building? :eek:
All you have to do is let them know you can smell it outside the apartment and that they might want to be careful because somebody might try to dime them. Not only that but if cops can smell the weed from outside, they have probable cause to go inside. Basically frame it like you’re just trying to help them out and let them know they might want to keep things a little more on the DL. Tell them YOU don’t care but somebody else might snitch. Potheads are paranoid. It might make them try to contain the smell a little.
ETA: I can’t go along with some of the above advice to be a bitch ass little nark. There are more civil and ethical ways to deal with such a minor issue.
Yeah, and they’re all on welfare. That’s how they can afford their Escalades.