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Where there’s smoke, there’s ire -BC

January 24, 2007
JONATHAN WOODWARD Special to The Globe and Mail

Neighbours at odds over butting out

VANCOUVER — First, there is the dry mouth and constricted throat, and then come the crippling asthma spasms that send Tamara Szymanska-Golik to the hospital.

She and her doctors know the source of the problem: the second-hand cigarette smoke that drifts from a neighbour’s balcony, through her window, and into her home.

“Smoking is my trigger,” said Ms. Szymanska-Golik, who is 46 and has hyperreactive airways and extremely severe asthma that prevents her from working. “My doctors say I’m better off on the street than in the apartment, and I should get out now; not tomorrow, now.”

But moving isn’t an option, she said. That would mean sacrificing her coveted place in the packed social-housing system and either paying far more at a market rate than she can afford on her disability allowance, or living on the street.

So after 11 months of increasingly acrimonious wrangling with the neighbours, the landlord, and finally an arbitration panel, Ms. Szymanska-Golik and another woman in her townhouse with severe respiratory problems, Sheila Abraham, decided they’d had enough. Last week, they filed suit with the B.C. Supreme Court to force their neighbours to butt out — or get out.

Ms. Abraham wrote in a court filing that the women’s suites are unlivable because exposure to second-hand smoke has “seriously jeopardized” their health. The public-housing body has a duty to find a way to let them live in good health, she alleges.

The only solution, according to Ms. Szymanska-Golik, is to segregate the smokers and the non-smokers in the quiet, 12-building housing project in the posh West Side of Vancouver. To her, that means the smokers should move.

The suit was filed on Jan. 5 as a request for a judicial review of an arbitrator’s decision that tenants who smoke in the building aren’t breaking the rules.

But it’s become a flashpoint where health officials and politicians are demanding changes to the way social housing is organized in B.C., while smokers fear their rights to quiet enjoyment of a cigarette at home will be violated.

Sara Gourley, the 49-year-old tenant, has multiple sclerosis, and said she deals with her shaking hands by smoking. She said she offered to smoke at only certain times of day, but the compromise was rejected. Since then, lines have been drawn.

“It’s my place,” Ms. Gourley said. “It’s my little patch. Why should I move?”

Arbitrator D. Simpson agreed with her. “All tenants have the right to quiet enjoyment of their homes,” said a ruling on Nov. 9, 2006. “There is no law against smoking.”

“Rules are rules,” said Ms. Gourley’s boyfriend, Richard Reeves. “And there’s not a rule being broken here.” If the court sides with the non-smoking tenants, then no smoker is safe from eviction, he said.

The Greater Vancouver Housing Corporation has tried to stop the smoke by caulking the edges of the windows, doors, electrical sockets, and even at one point considered putting Plexiglas around Ms. Gourley’s balcony. But none of that will do any good, said Don Littleford, the GVHC regional manager.

“There’s just no way to isolate the air — the climate is just such that people have their windows and doors open, and no manner of caulking or sealing is going to alter the smoky existence of Sheila and Tamara,” he said.

The women’s New Democrat MLA, Gregor Robertson, wrote to the Premier to press for changes to social housing.

“They have no choice in terms of where to move; they’re lucky to have the home they have,” he said. “But they’ve got their back to the wall — there’s nowhere for them to go.”

Vancouver’s chief medical officer, Dr. John Blatherwick, said that it is time for the housing corporation to make some buildings free of smoke. “We have known for a long time that second-hand smoke is a major problem,” he said. “For people like [Ms. Szymanska-Golik], it is the difference from ending up with major respiratory problems and costing the health-care system thousands of dollars, or making available equal housing in a non-smoking setting.”

GVHC has about 3,500 units throughout the Lower Mainland, but each is full, and there’s a 12,000-person waiting list, Mr. Littleford said. Turnover is not high, so waiting for vacancies to enforce non-smoking provisions could take years.

Heather Place, because it’s in the posh West Side, two blocks from Vancouver General Hospital, is less likely to develop vacancies than most places, he said. And the corporation doesn’t have the money to build new houses, he added.

GVHC is trying to arrange a swap between smokers and non-smokers to create a smoke-free building, Mr. Littleford said. But if no one wants to move, there’s little the landlord can do.

“This is smokers’ rights versus non-smokers’ rights,” he said. “There’s no immediate quick fix.”

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Property owner slaps smoking ban on apartments -AB

January 5, 2007
By CARY CASTAGNA, EDMONTON SUN

Hundreds of tenants living in four Edmonton apartment blocks won’t be allowed to light up in the privacy of their own suites after this month.

Globe General Agencies, which owns the buildings, has opted to go entirely smoke-free as of Feb. 1, said property manager Shelly Fedorak.

“We have not had one person grumbling. Overall, it’s been very positive,” she said, adding that tenants seem to agree with the decision to make the buildings cleaner and healthier.

“Even if you’re a smoker, it’s terrible to walk down a hallway and have that smell of smoke hit you in the face.”

Since announcing the move to go smokeless, about half a dozen people have put their names on a waiting list to get into the buildings, Fedorak told the Sun.

“Mostly seniors are really for it,” she added.

Under the ban, tenants will be prohibited from smoking in their suites, on their balconies and patios, and in indoor parkades, Fedorak said, adding smoking was previously banned in common areas.

Globe will also look into what can be done about curtailing outdoor smoking in the vicinity of front entrances and back doors, Fedorak said.

The Winnipeg-based property owners banned smoking in their 75 residential properties in Manitoba last year. It was just a matter of time before the policy was enacted in Edmonton, Fedorak said.

“Usually everything they do there we do here. It’s company policy,” she added.

Globe also owns an upper-scale residential property in Montreal, which will likely go smoke-free in the future, Fedorak said.

The four Edmonton buildings impacted by the smoke ban are the 142-unit Lamplighter at 10333 121 St., the 60-unit Southgate at 10405 Saskatchewan Dr., the 49-unit Huntington at 5425 144B Ave., and the 211-unit Hargate at 10160 114 St.

Steve Smerdely, a 77-year-old Lamplighter resident, said the smoking ban could be difficult to enforce.

“People don’t care. They’ll smoke anyway,” said Smerdely, who quit his habit 14 years ago.

Resident, Luis Canales, applauded the ban, saying it will help him and his girlfriend keep their New Year’s resolution to stop puffing.

Action on Smoking and Health, an Edmonton-based anti-smoking lobby group, wants to see smoking banned in all multi-unit buildings.
Read

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Call for smoking ban is fearmongering -ON

By NANCY DAIGNEAULT Sat, December 23, 2006

It was deeply disappointing and disturbing to see a columnist of Mike Strobel’s usually high calibre endorse irresponsible fearmongering and attempt to incite the public against smokers.

Strobel gave his blessing to calls for a ban on smoking in private apartments and condos. He promoted the emotional and totally unsubstantiated claim we are all at risk as we sleep because tobacco smoke from our neighbours’ homes may be seeping into our own through phone jacks and other minute openings. (By the way, I am a non-smoker, too.)

There is no actual evidence offered that this is a serious problem, or that even if minute amounts of smoke might make their way through phone jacks they pose a significant threat.

Even Ontario’s Liberal government — which has blindly accepted virtually every measure against smokers proposed by its non-smoker only advisory groups — has distanced itself from this latest wild claim and demand. There are limits to how much of a nanny state it is prepared to become. Apparently, Strobel feels those limits are too constrained.

Strobel repeats generalities about second-hand smoke being dangerous. Well, so is barbecue smoke and so are vehicle emissions. I don’t see him calling for a ban on balcony grills or cars driving past open windows.

He fails to point out that while a flood of recently commissioned studies suggest some health risks associated with second-hand smoke, they are largely based on theories, guesses and a desire to prove a preconceived notion. They often conflict with epidemiological studies conducted over several decades, which followed tens of thousands of subjects and found no statistically significant increased risks of cancer or heart disease for non smokers living with smokers.

If you are going to claim that even people who smoke in the privacy of their own homes are such a grave threat to neighbours that they — and they alone — represent the one law-abiding group in society that should be evicted or harassed into selling their home, you had better be dammed sure you can justify it. If you are going to call for smokers to be systematically banned from renting apartments, you had better have more than emotional claims and theories to back you up.

Can you think of any other case where, without demanding proof and at least attempting to verify the “evidence,” you would endorse an attempt by one group to generate such a campaign against any other law-abiding minority?

CREATE PANIC

The latest demands for bans are clearly intended to create panic and turn neighbour against neighbour. This campaign preys on the dislike that some non-smokers may have for smokers in general and seeks to allow them to feel justified in harassing their neighbours. It is the work of the same ideologists who are now using the new smoking ban regulations to drive seniors in retirement and long-term care homes out on to the streets to smoke, or confining them inside and forcing them to quit smoking.

By the way, mychoice.ca is not an “anti-anti-smoking group.” A third of our 40,000 members want to quit and a key issue is having the Ontario government fulfil its promise to use revenues from tax increases to help pay for cessation products.

We do not oppose the Smoke Free Ontario Act. We only oppose those elements of it that deny smokers their own places to go, that impose clearly unfair and unkind bans on those who are the most vulnerable, such as veterans and seniors, and that set precedents for even graver infringements.

Why is there a need for us to exist? Why have we gained so many members in such a short time? Mike Strobel’s poorly conceived column provides the answer to that.

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The next smoking battle -ON

By MIKE STROBEL Wed, December 13, 2006

Mark my words, says Mike Strobel. Apartment towers will be smoke-free … someday

You smokers think your last stand was the local pub?

Better have another drink. Then go out in the rain and sleet and have a puff to settle your nerves.

The war is coming to your living room.

Mark my words. Sooner than you think, lighting up in a highrise apartment or condo will be outlawed, except in specified buildings.

Welcome, dear addict, to Tobacco Towers.

Smokers will not go peacefully. They still sting from bloody defeats at work, in malls, restaurants, bars and most everywhere else.

“Irresponsible fear-mongering designed to pit neighbour against neighbour,” hisses a press release.

It is from mychoice.ca, the anti-anti-smoking people.

They are returning fire, so to speak, at the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association. (nsra-adnf.ca)

The NSRA’s latest volley: “Drifting second-hand smoke in multi-unit buildings is a significant public health problem.”

Oh, oh, here we go again, smokers mutter.

I used to think that way, a dozen years ago when I smoked two packs a day and was going to live forever.

TOBACCO FARM

Hell’s bells, I was born on a tobacco farm.

Smoking was a right. Just as we were free to drink, overeat, have kinky sex, or pick our nose for crying out loud.

As long as it didn’t hurt anyone else.

Today, only the most mulish among us still believes second-hand smoke is harmless. A freedom? My butt.

Science says so. Common sense says so.

So …

Why should the family in Apartment 201, the one with three kids and a fourth on the way, have to suck in the emissions of the chain-smoker in Apartment 202?

Bullfeathers, says mychoice.ca. Smoke cannot drift from our apartment to yours.

“One might as well claim cooking in peanut oil or consuming peanuts should be banned because the smoke or other particles in the air will go through the walls and could kill those who are severely allergic,” says mychoice.ca president Nancy Daigneault.

Well, that is just silly.

You cannot get anaphylactic shock from second-hand peanut smoke.

Unless your neighbour slathers your walls with peanut butter, and you lick your walls, you’ll be fine.

Not so with second-hand tobacco smoke. Ask any of the 425 Ontarians who die of its effects every year.

Oh, right, we can’t ask them.

Or the thousands who suffer everything from nasal cancer to miscarriages to middle-ear infections.

Mychoice.ca scoffs at NSRA claims that neighbours’ smoke seeps through doors, vents, plumbing and phone jacks.

‘TAKE A STAND’

The mychoice.ca people obviously have never lived next door to someone making curry.

Ms Daigneault is right about one thing.

“Unless we take a stand, this year’s demands by the anti-smoking lobby will become next year’s new laws.”

Ask any barkeep about that.

This front in the Tobacco War is new, but will spread fast.

On Oct. 1, Winnipeg’s largest landlord made its 60 buildings smoke-free.

The motive is money: Savings in rug cleaning, painting, burn repairs and insurance premiums.

In Vancouver, Canada’s first smoke-free condo building opens in February.

Surely, Toronto will soon follow.

“We’re getting a lot of calls,” says NSRA exec Pippa Beck.

She says fully non-smoking highrises are legal in Toronto. Current smoking tenants can stay ’til they move out or die.

“We don’t want to push people out into the cold of winter,” says Beck.

Market pressure on landlords is key, since so few of us smoke anymore.

“People are looking at the bans in public places and at work, then they come home to their infant daughter and they say, ‘If it’s dangerous there, it’s dangerous here, too.'”

Beck says compromises could see top floors (heat and hazy air rises) zoned for smokers. Or one building in a complex.

But a ban on smoking at home? Isn’t that, um, un-Canadian?

No more than a ban on loud music at 3 in the morning or on keeping 100 cats in the bathroom.

You smokers are desperate. You grasp at the straw of “freedom.” Fine. Many of us have been there. We feel your pain.

Just don’t exhale on your friends and neighbours.

The NSRA says it prefers a voluntary switch to smoke-free highrises. But smokers have heard that line before.

Hold your breath. It won’t be long.

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Anti-smoking lobby wants smokers evicted and denied accommodation

December 11, 2006
By SooToday.com Staff NEWS RELEASE MYCHOICE.CA

Mon. Dec 11, 2006: The anti-tobacco lobby has once again used its annual closed-door, government-sponsored conference to dream up a new campaign against smokers – this time aimed at forcing them out of their homes and denying them accommodation.

In a move that is irresponsible fear-mongering of the worst kind, the anti-smoking lobby is seeking to turn neighbour against neighbour in order to hound smokers from their homes and encourage major landlords to refuse to rent to them.

The Non-Smokers Rights Association, supported by other groups such as the Ontario Campaign Against Tobacco, used this week’s annual Ontario Tobacco Control Conference in Niagara Falls to issue a press release calling for bans on smoking in condos and apartments.

The NSRA press release made emotionally charged claims without offering a single shred of evidence to show there is a problem.

Instead it made wild, unsubstantiated insinuations that neighbours of smokers are at grave risk from smoke that may seep through the partitioning walls through phone jacks and other conduits.

“One might as well claim cooking in peanut oil or consuming peanuts should be banned because the smoke or other particles in the air will go through the walls and could kill those who are severely allergic,” said Nancy Daigneault, president of the nearly 40,000-member smokers’ rights association mychoice.ca.

“What about air fresheners and other sprays and scents that some people are allergic to? If smoke is getting through the walls then these products are, too.”

“And if we go down this road, how long before people start fearing neighbours who may have communicable illnesses? Will condo boards and apartment landlords ban and evict sick people based on the allegation that germs may be sneaking through phone jacks to infect neighbours?”

Ms. Daigneault said if the claims made about tobacco smoke are even remotely true, then the problem applies to all potentially harmful materials and steps should be taken to improve the construction.

“Miniscule traces of tobacco smoke would probably be the least of the things people ought to be worried about,” Ms. Daigneault said.

The fact that the government has so far refused to comply with the latest ban demands is only partially reassuring because this powerful lobby group has a constant record of browbeating politicians into adopting extreme measures to hound citizens who smoke.

“The government promised that seniors living out their sunset years in retirement homes would be allowed to smoke – then deliberately created onerous regulations that have resulted in smoking rooms being closed in many facilities,” said Ms. Daigneault. “It is also standing by as local health groups ban smoking for these residents outside on their grounds.”

Ms. Daigneault also noted that at least one major landlord in Western Canada has banned smokers from leasing any of its many thousands of apartments and politicians have failed to take a stand against this.

“Unless we take a stand, this year’s demands by the anti smoking lobby will become next year’s new laws,” Ms. Daigneault said.

That the anti-smoking lobby feels free to irresponsibly promote a vendetta to drive people from their homes is just one more example of why it is wrong for governments to listen only to these groups and to deny anyone else any input into the designing of new tobacco control policies.

Another example is its renewed demand for the Ontario government and others to dramatically increase taxes yet again on smokers. Of course they unanimously like this idea – no one was allowed to attend the conference who would note that taxes are already at their highest level ever and have created a new black market industry, with illicit products being sold on the streets across the province at a fraction of the price of legal products to adults and children alike.

Ms. Daigneault said the Ontario Tobacco Control Conference is designed to promote ideology, not produce sound policies based on facts, realities and the need to balance the rights of the majority and minorities.

It has now become so bad that the government and the anti-smoking lobby groups it funds are no longer satisfied with excluding anyone with different views from attending their conferences.

For this past week’s conference at the Sheraton in Niagara Falls, they pressured the hotel into canceling a small meeting room booked by mychoice.ca for a gathering of its local members.

“The hotel informed mychoice.ca they had been advised that the conference organizers would not tolerate our group being allowed to meet in the same location,” said Ms. Daigneault. “The irony is that delegates from the conference would have been welcome to attend our meeting.”

“This action represents discrimination by the hotel and an escalation of attempts by the conference and its government sponsors to prevent free speech and freedom of peaceful assembly,” Ms. Daigneault said. “It is an affront to our members,” Ms. Daigneault said.

Mychoice.ca has sent a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission and is pursuing the issue with the hotel through other means.

Mychoice.ca offers a voice for Canada’s adult smokers and others who believe in fair laws, government accountability and personal choice.

It is funded by the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers’ Council, but is a registered non-profit organization operating independently on behalf of the approaching 40,000 individuals who have signed up as members.

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Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbour…not so fast! Blowing second hand smoke doesn’t show much love -ON

Dec. 4, 2006

You may not see it, you may not be smoking it, but you definitely smell it, and it may kill you. Second-hand smoke in apartments and condominiums doesn’t get the public and media attention it deserves. Drifting second-hand smoke in multi-unit dwellings is a significant public health problem. While Ontarians are now protected from second-hand smoke at work and in public places, at home they remain exposed to “fresh” smoke coming from other units and to “stale” smoke off-gassing from furnishings, walls, and carpeting.

Second-hand smoke is very toxic. Short-term exposure can irritate the respiratory system and cause headaches, nausea, and dizziness. Long-term exposure can cause a variety of illnesses, including lung cancer, nasal sinus cancer, breast cancer in younger (primarily premenopausal women), asthma, and heart disease. Children are particularly vulnerable to second-hand smoke, at increased risk of ear infections, lower respiratory infections, and asthma.

According to the Canadian Journal of Public Health, second-hand smoke causes more than 1100 deaths per year in the forms of heart disease and lung cancer.

“Canadians spend two thirds of their time indoors at home, yet people who live in apartments and condominiums currently have no protection from drifting second-hand smoke,” says Pippa Beck of the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association. “Society needs to recognize drifting second-hand smoke as a serious health risk. We need to ensure that people who live in multi-unit buildings have the choice of living in a smoke-free home.”

Drifting second-hand smoke can come from a variety of sources including, open windows or doors, neighboring balconies or patios, electrical outlets, cable or phone jacks, ceiling fixtures, cracks and gaps around sinks, countertops, windows, doors, floors, walls, ceilings, ventilation system.

“Tenants have the right to ‘reasonable enjoyment’ in their homes,” reinforces Beck. “And apartment building owners have the right to make their building smoke-free.” “A lot of work needs to be done on this issue, starting with raising awareness of the health risks and the rights of tenants and landlords,” adds tobacco control consultant Melodie Tilson. “In the meantime, people who live in apartments and condominiums can install physical barriers to minimize how much tobacco smoke enters their home.”

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Rental agency bans all smoking on its premises -MB

October 29, 2006
By ROSS ROMANIUK, CITY HALL REPORTER

Privacy and property

The rights of thousands of apartment dwellers are being trampled by a Winnipeg rental agency’s ban on smoking at any of its properties — even in the open air, says one tenant.

St. James resident Beverly Reeves has fired off letters to Mayor Sam Katz and Premier Gary Doer to complain about a decision by Globe General Agencies to prohibit puffing not only inside its rental suites, but on patios and balconies adjacent to and attached to them. The ban even extends to apartment block parking lots.

“The right to privacy and the right to control our own personal environment and outdoor spaces takes priority over lifestyle choice issues,” Reeves told the Sun in a letter.

Globe’s Ron Penner confirmed the across-the-board clampdown on smoking which kicked in Oct. 1 extends to parking areas and patios at the company’s 75 residential complexes, which hold about 5,000 units. The provincial ban only covers enclosed public spaces, allowing smokers to light up on patios.

WON’T BACK DOWN

Penner said the firm won’t back down from what it calls a common-sense policy based not only on health, but the safety of property.

As of Oct. 1, Globe’s new tenants have been barred from lighting up “on the parking lot, on the balconies — we just don’t want smoking on the property,” said Penner, the company’s vice-president of operation.

“If I go out on my balcony and smoke in the summertime, the guy who lives above me smells my smoke. The guy beside me smells my smoke. The people down below me get my butts.

“We’ve had a number of situations where people have had their carpets on the balconies catch fire.”

While existing tenants can continue to smoke under a “grandfather” allowance, Penner said any removal of the restriction for certain areas would bring a “slippery slope” that kills the ban’s effectiveness.

Roger Barsy, director of the Manitoba government’s residential tenancies branch, said Globe’s move appears to be a “reasonable” restriction on smoking in common areas — which the province allows.

Barsy added, though, that while Globe’s no-smoking order has prompted very few complaints to his office, he’s fielded several inquiries.

Penner admitted the company’s tobacco-use ban is stiffer than those from the city and provincial government, but defended the company’s right to enforce it.

“The difference is that we own these buildings. It’s our investment,” he said.

“There’s going to be a percentage of people who will not live in our buildings as a result of that. We’re prepared to take that risk.”