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Topic
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After not the slightest whiff of cigarette smoke for years, all of a sudden we think we have a closet (open window) smoker right undeneath us, in a shared unit, 10 feet or less from my tween son’s bedroom. Also an ex-executive committee member and reformed smoker, miffed at not getting re-elected, has lapsed and taken to smoking downstairs in the common property thus sharing his second hand smoke with 5 other apartments.
I have discovered lots of things about strata living from the wonderful Flat Chat including the ‘hazardous nuisance’ item in the NSW Strata Titles Act, Section 117.1.(a) & (b) & (c).
In short, I can’t see how anyone can actually get away with smoking anywhere in a strata including its common property unless it’s in a hermetically sealed room. Am I right to think that, in both the examples I cite, the smokers are in breach of the NSW Strata Titles Act and can be asked to stop on the basis that it’s a ‘hazardous nuisance’ and interferes with my ‘enjoyment’? It sounds so deliciously simple.
And yes I agree! Barbecue smoke shouldn’t be shared either!
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@JimmyT said:
@Dragandeewhy said:
This whole smoking thing is kind of the result of manipulated mass psichology. Nobody ever mentioned smoking marihuana. In my previous post I have mentioned all the other examples where “if you can smell it, it is dangerous for you” but nobody took it seriously.So, “manipulated mass psychology” is the cause of cancer, heart disease and emphysema? Get real.
People who smoke stink enough to take the smell with them when they walk into a room. Doesn’t that tell you something about the lingering effects of smoke.
People who lived in apartments 100 years ago had other things to worry about – that doesn’t make smoking OK.
I will cheerfully set fire to the next person who tells me “you breathe in pollution all the time so what difference does cigarette smoke make?”.
It’s called harm minimisation – it’s why we have speed limits and road rules and asbestos laws … to protect ourselves against idiots who don’t care about their own health and expect everyone else to suffer as a consequence.
Are you saying that every “stink” or smell is harmful for you? Harm minimisation or positive discrimination how ever you call it still gives the right to the morally superior once to openly hate the addicts. In the north of Sydney they are openly hated while going more to the west or south the tolerance towards smokers increases. While visiting Europe or other continents the whole discomfort around smoking miraculously disappears. This is what I was talking about with “mass physiology”. A push biker will openly show discomfort in the presence of a person who smokes while he or she inhales with the full capacity of his her lungs the fumes of peak hour traffic, thinking that he is living a healthy life style. Etc etc etc.
@Dragandeewhy said:
A push biker will openly show discomfort in the presence of a person who smokes while he or she inhales with the full capacity of his her lungs the fumes of peak hour traffic, thinking that he is living a healthy life style. Etc etc etc.
I am sure your hypothetical cyclist would much prefer that the other vehicles on the road were other cyclists or electric vehicles not producing the fumes.
Dragandeewhy said
Are you saying that every “stink” or smell is harmful for you?As you will see, I am not saying anything of the kind. Cigarette smoke is known to cause cancer and other diseases, even among passive smokers. The USA’s Surgeon General says that living with a smoker increases your chances of contracting lung cancer by 30 percent.
Harm minimisation or positive discrimination how ever you call it still gives the right to the morally superior once to openly hate the addicts.
“Positive discrimination” has nothing to do with it. I don’t hate the addicts – I just hate the attitude that I have to risk my health and my peaceful enjoyment of my home so they can kill themselves in theirs.
In the north of Sydney they are openly hated while going more to the west or south the tolerance towards smokers increases.
And look at the cancer and heart disease rates there. Only six percent of people in Northern Sydney smoke compared to 14 to 16 percent in Western and South-Western Sydney. That’s peer group pressure for you but even out west it’s still a tiny minority inflicting their filthy habits on others.
While visiting Europe or other continents the whole discomfort around smoking miraculously disappears.
According to you … it used to be the same in New York and L.A. – try lighting up in a restaurant or bar there now, or in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries. According to this website “currently, 17 EU countries have comprehensive smoke-free laws in place. Among these, Ireland, the UK, Greece, Bulgaria, Malta, Spain and Hungary have the strictest smoke-free provisions with a complete ban on smoking in enclosed public places, on public transport and in workplaces, with only limited exceptions allowed.”
And if you look at this report you will see that the areas of the world that were late to take up the non-smoking banner (Europe and North America) had the highest cancer rates.
This is what I was talking about with “mass physiology”.
So it’s “mass physiology” now is it? Isn’t than a fun run or a pump class at the gym?
A push biker will openly show discomfort in the presence of a person who smokes while he or she inhales with the full capacity of his her lungs the fumes of peak hour traffic, thinking that he is living a healthy life style. Etc etc etc.
That is a pathetic argument. Flip it and you have the cyclist deciding not to ride in traffic because the idiot downstairs from them is filling his flat with cigarette smoke, so what’s the point in trying to be healthy? FYI, governments all around the world have made huge inroads into the level of pollutants from cars and other vehicle. Tried to buy petrol that isn’t lead-free recently?
This is an all-too-common bleat against a healthy lifestyle because it might affect others’ “rights” to pollute the air breathed by the people around them. Two of the five recommended ways to lower your risk of cancer, according to this easy to follow document are to avoid smoking and to exercise regularly. Where does that leave your passive smoking cyclist?
How do you feel about the “right” to go out at night, get paralytic drunk then punch the crap out of some unsuspecting innocent stranger. “Ooooh … but it’s my addiction … I’m the victim here … what about my civil rights?”
If the “Nanny State” exists – and I’m not sure it does – it’s not because some people can’t be trusted to look after themselves, it’s because they are happy to take other people to Hell with them in the same handcart.
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We obviously do not understand each other. You come from one side of ideological thinking I come from the side of “live and let live”. This topic is to large to be typed on a space of a forum thread. Through out the whole human history there was some sort of substance abuse that took other people to hell. Right now there is a constant positive media coverage of marihuana while smartly avoiding the negatives of marihuana abuse. Nobody is mentioning the marihuana rehab centres in holland or South Africa. Remember it is great to build haven but once you build it you might find that it is place that nothing ever happens.
@PeterC said:
@Dragandeewhy said:
A push biker will openly show discomfort in the presence of a person who smokes while he or she inhales with the full capacity of his her lungs the fumes of peak hour traffic, thinking that he is living a healthy life style. Etc etc etc.
I am sure your hypothetical cyclist would much prefer that the other vehicles on the road were other cyclists or electric vehicles not producing the fumes.
But they are not , so? This is about apartment living not cyclists versus cars.
Dragondeewhy – this discussion, like cigarette smoke, seems to have drifted away from the original source, and from my perspective at least it’s becoming a bit tiresome, and your habit of including the entirety of previous threads as a quote, with older quotes within, doesn’t help (I’ve fixed #20).
We’ve progressed from people farting in the lift, to the smoke from BBQs, to people smoking on common property, to being influenced by “mass psichology” (sic), to vehicles’ exhaust smoke, and now to the legalised use of marijuana.
Enough is enough for me….. can we please get back to strata-related topics?
@Dragandeewhy said:
We obviously do not understand each other. You come from one side of ideological thinking I come from the side of “live and let live”.I think I understand you perfectly – your attitude isn’t live and let live, though, it’s let me live the way I want and let others die if that happens to be their luck.
To get back to how this affects apartment living, if people aren’t prepared to tolerate the presence of other people in close proximity, and put up with some of their idiosyncracies, then they shouldn’t be living in apartments.
But there have to be limits and they include respecting other people’s property, their privacy and not causing a nuisance. If your libertarian sense of freedom is offended by the minor and perfectly reasonable restrictions that inevitably places on your behaviour, go and live in a house where you won’t bother anyone and they won’t bother you.
To paraphrase the judge who banned a couple from smoking INSIDE their unit in Sydney, because the smoke was affecting neighbouring apartments, the issue only arose because the couple smoked; in other words, “no smoke, no problem”.
Smoking is a foul and filthy habit and passive smoking kills. Trying to justify inflicting one person’s smoke on another with fatuous arguments about the level of pollution already in our lives is missing the point, I suspect deliberately.
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@Whale said:
Dragondeewhy – this discussion, like cigarette smoke, seems to have drifted away from the original source, and from my perspective at least it’s becoming a bit tiresome, and your habit of including the entirety of previous threads as a quote, with older quotes within, doesn’t help (I’ve fixed #20).We’ve progressed from people farting in the lift, to the smoke from BBQs, to people smoking on common property, to being influenced by “mass psichology” (is sic), to vehicles’ exhaust smoke, and now to the legalised use of marijuana.
Enough is enough for me….. can we please get back to strata-related topics?
Agree but as Internet forums go one thread might end up in totally different direction. The thread is usually owned by the person who started it and he should keep the direction of the thread. Enough from me in this thread.
Queensland is taking on this issue. Oh and parking, pets, overcrowding, recovery of unpaid levies and scheme termination. You know, just the easy topics.
@Queenslander said:
https://www.justice.qld.gov.au/corporate/community-consultation/community-consultation-activities/current-activities/review-of-property-law-in-queenslandQueensland is taking on this issue. Oh and parking, pets, overcrowding, recovery of unpaid levies and scheme termination. You know, just the easy topics.
Interesting reading and has many similarities with NSW much-delayed efforts to do the same. Interesting though that the report cites the inability to create by-laws restricting pets. Owners in Queensland are starting from along way behind the eight-ball if they can’t even create a workable pets by-law.
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