I am thankful that I live in a building that takes smoking complaints seriously.
It’s a non-smoking building but that doesn’t mean anything if management doesn’t take seriously complaints about people who ignore the bylaws.
Our building’s strata recently launched a crackdown that included signage in elevators and other public spaces, as well as fines being handed out.
I imagine that “Teddy in Burnaby” is weeping reading these lines.
Teddy lives in a Metrotown condo tower in which smoking is banned, but where smokers “just laugh at that notion.”
“People openly smoke in the elevators, the lobby and the hallways because our strata is a bunch of cowards who are too scared of their own shadows to confront anyone,” said Teddy. “And one strata members is also a smoker who bullies the rest of them. The more we file complaints, the more smokers go out of their way to flout the rules. They think it’s a big joke because the strata refuses to do anything about it. I told them, ‘Better lawyer up, Bud’ because I have had it.”
I basically get two types of reader complaints about stratas and rental buildings. The leadership either takes rules to extremes or they don’t do anything at all to enforce rules.
The No. 1 rules complaint based on reader complaints is about smoking, which is being outlawed in more and more places. Now many buildings and governments are adding vaping restrictions to the mix.
I received another impassioned plea from another reader about smoking.
“I realized too late that I had moved into a building where smoking is permitted — even inside the suites,” wrote Shannon Levesque. “I feel so upset, trapped, frustrated by not being able to open a window to cool down or breathe fresh air. I doubt, sadly, that I am alone in this. No doubt there are many tenants like me out there stuck at home and powerless to make the necessary changes. I realize that in these stressful, community virus days, coping mechanisms like smoking are treasured companions. But these individuals' coping strategies do heighten stress for others.
“Why in a time when we know that even second-hand smoke is a known carcinogen is this allowed? I am not opposed to individual freedoms, except when they impinge on the health and safety of others. Their smoke does not stay within their apartment's boundaries. I am being forced to live with their habits in my home. I was led to believe that smoking was only permitted outside, and when I spoke to my downstairs neighbours when I moved in, they assured me they didn't smoke cigarettes much, (the smoke is coarse and incessant). What they smoked was cannabis. Are there no other options? Why should the only apparent choice in 2020 be that I would have to move at great inconvenience and incur expense? Are there truly no other choices here? I am a tenant, not an owner, but does that mean I am not entitled to enjoy my home?”
While B.C. has the lowest smoking rate in Canada, at 14.2 per cent, there are still approximately 550,000 British Columbians who smoke, though an estimated 70 per cent of them want to quit, according the B.C. Ministry of Health.
To access the smoking cessation program, call HealthLink B.C., at 811.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
