Ombudsman: Smoking at home neither illegal nor a nuisance “in itself”
Sunday, August 15, 2021 at 14:12 According to Bristol Live, the online version of the Bristol Post:
Civic watchdogs have refused to investigate Bristol City Council after a tenant complained that a neighbour’s cigarette smoke was affecting his health.
The man appealed to the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman to take up his case following a decision by the authority not to issue an abatement notice ordering the neighbour to stop smoking in their own home.
Crucially:
The report said smoking at home was not illegal or a nuisance in itself and the authority had insufficient evidence to serve an abatement notice.
It’s good to see both the council and the ombudsman standing firm on this issue. If only government had done the same before the introduction of the smoking ban.
As we know the ban was introduced primarily to ‘protect’ bar workers from the alleged effects of ‘secondhand ’ smoke, even though there was very little evidence to support the claim that ‘passive’ smoking was a significant risk to their health.
On the handful of occasions that cases went to court in the UK the plaintiffs lost every time because there was insufficient evidence to prove that their ill health was caused by exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.
A few cases were settled out of court but that was because the defendants - in one case a casino - most likely chose to settle for a relatively small sum rather than risk losing a protracted legal battle that might have cost them a lot more.
Even if the defendant had won the plaintiff may not have had the money to pay legal costs so the defendant would have been massively out of pocket, which is why so many insurance companies settle out of court regardless of who is to ‘blame’.
Indeed settling out of court is often a prudent business decision rather than an admission of guilt or liability.
Thinking back I can’t recall a single case in which exposure to secondhand smoke in the workplace was proved to the satisfaction of a judge to cause harm to others, and the same is true of smoke allegedly drifting from one property to another via the walls or floorboards.
What’s interesting however is how few cases like this come up.
I vaguely remember being asked to comment on a similar case - in Wrexham, I think - but that was at least a decade ago and nothing, to the best of my knowledge, came of it.
Perhaps there will be a high profile case at some point but the absence of the ‘no win no fee’ brigade of lawyers around this issue speaks volumes.
Quite simply, if they thought there was money in it I’m sure they’d be all over it. And they’re not.
PS. Bizarrely Bristol Live headlined its report ‘Bristol City Council tenant claims neighbour's smoking harmed his health’ when the story actually concerned the ombudsman’s refusal to investigate the lack of enforcement action by the Council for the reasons mentioned above.
Anyone seeing the headline without reading the report however might be influenced to believe the tenant’s claim that his neighbour’s smoking had harmed his health when there was no evidence to support such an allegation.
A small thing perhaps but typical of the anti-smoking spin the media likes to put on such reports.
Update: By coincidence it has recently been reported that a woman was fined in court for 'potent cannabis smells' coming from her home.
Following the verdict a council officer said:
“This case represents the first known successful prosecution brought in Leicestershire for a breach of a Community Protection Notice concerning the impacts of drug use from a residential dwelling …”
In this case the fine appears to have been awarded for the ‘nuisance’ caused by the use of an illegal drug.
How that might translate to a legal drug such as tobacco I’m not sure but it’s worth keeping an eye.
Meanwhile you might want to read this:
You can smell someone smoking weed next door - here's everything you can do and what the law says
This in turn leads to another question: what happens if and when cannabis is legalised?
Given that its use is unlikely to be allowed in indoor public places, will neighbours be able to complain if the ‘potent and recognisable smell’ wafts into their home or garden?
Reader Comments (2)
Smoking in one's own home is indeed neither illegal or an actual nuisance (and it certainly isn't a health threat to anyone indoors or especially outside). Nevertheless the slow motion prohibition of tobacco instituted by anti-smoker activist groups manipulating health and public information demand continued incremental steps toward promotion. Tobacco control's excesses must end and their quest for prohibition stopped. They will of course fight that with renewed propaganda--after all prohibition is their business.
Because cannabis is illegal, that might have given extra weight to the claim of nuisance.
Weed smokers and tobacco smokers have a common fight against prohibition and the intolerance of bullies of who think everything they dislike or fear should be banned, so it always amazes me when cannabis smokers try to claim the higher health ground by promoting their choice as "healthy" and tobacco as a "killer".
Truth is cannabis has 10 times the tar level of tobacco and really is potentially much more harmful, but each to their own.