Obligatory. However, if you Google “smelloscope,” half of the results are of that olfactometer now.
Seems to be a way of continuing to criminalize marijuana use.
I wonder what would happen if a person fertilized their lawn with 100% organic fertilizer direct from the farm. winks
I hope that stinky smokers are apprehended with exactly the frequency as owners of dogs that can be heard barking past property lines.
Using that equipment is a good idea. My city used one a few years back to deal with locating the source of an unpleasant odor in one neighborhood. There was dispute about who was to blame and the machine helped rule out some of the things that the finger was pointed at that weren’t the offender.
I like that it helps quantify and prove the problem. It makes it so that your neighbors can’t just complain that you’re stinking up their property and it be your word against theirs. The city can use the smelloscope and detect if you’re really a genuine nuisance or not. It’s the odor nuisance equivalent of the decibel meter they use for noise complaints. Like in a noise complaint, without the decimeter, it’s just one neighbor saying someone is too loud, but no way of determining for certain how loud they really are, but with the meter, it’s easy to tell if you’re really in violation of the noise ordinance or if your neighbor is justified in their being annoyed or if they’re just whiners.
So, no jetpacks, no flying cars, no cold fusion, no pills that grow a new kidney, no transporters, no vacations on the moon, but we have the smelloscope.
The future sucks.
I’m sure there’s no way this ordinance will be abused by crap landlords and pissy HOA’s…
Yeah. As a non-smoker–marijuana or anything else–there’s no way to keep from spreading the smell short of locking yourself in a house and keeping the windows shut at all times, and have a change of clothes and shower in an airlock. And if you’re in an apartment building, tough titties.
Having said that, if done properly, that the olfactometer is a good idea; the smell has to be measurable and not just “it stinks because I say it stinks”.
On the other hand, sure beats the ever-so-popular, “I smelt pot” searches.
Seriously, fuck these guys. OTOH, now that it’s legal, you could just get butane hash and a vaporizer.
It also stinks.
The ordinance, totally, but the smelloscope will take away the power to do that. The HOA and the landlord can be petty all they want, but if they bring out the smelloscope and your place isn’t smelling enough to violate the rule at the neighbor’s place, then there’s nothing they can do about it.
I would think it would be possible to keep it to a level that wouldn’t smell up your neighbor’s place if you were working on being respectful and neighborly. I’ve had neighbors that I didn’t know smoked pot till they said so. Even in duplexes and apartment complexes. No, you’re not going to be able to hide it very well from your mom when you’re a teenager just by putting a towel under the door, but an adult should be able to find a workable way to keep their house from reaking so much the neighbors are bothered by it.
I can see this being useful for all kinds of disputes. “The jury finds that it was, in fact, the plaintiff who dealt it.”
This. While yeah, the stuff stinks, heavy use of it can be a real irritant to those downwind too if it’s a strong enough amount.
As someone with a symptomically asthmatic child, this needs to be taken into account in much the same way that some secondhand tobacco smoke legislation is.
Some like the smell of smoke; be it tobacco, wood, leaves, what-have-you
Some people don’t.
Why are the people who don’t like the smell of smoke granted greater protection under the law than those who do? I don’t remember any sort of protection from smells I don’t like in common law or as part of the constitution. I don’t like the smell of commercial food production but I would be crazy to think my dislike has any bearing on the lives and activities of others.
If a smell is considered offensive by a plurality of people, then I can see the civil argument having some merit but where are the studies showing that the plurality or even majority of people dislike the smell of burning marijuana?
It’s not usually a Constitution thing as much as a local ordinance thing. The smell that my community used a smelloscope to pinpoint the origin of turned out to be an animal food factory. We also have rules in my town that don’t let you have smelly garbage or an unclean house that your neighbors can smell and that don’t let you keep your animals in such a way that their smell can bother the neighbors. Other than the unclean house/sewage/animal smells that are specificially mentioned in our city codes, any other awful smells (like the pet food factory smell) are more based on the complaints from neighbors than a general community consensus that something is icky.
Apparently the voters or legislators in Colorado decided that pot smoke was a sufficiently bad smell to be mentioned specifically. My guess is that outlawing the smell specifically was part of the deal to get it legalized. It shot down or dealt with adequately a concern, be it genuine or trollish, from some opponents of legalization. Folks whose last logical way to stand against adult individuals being free to consume what they want within the privacy of their own homes was “what about the smell drifting over to my property?” could be dealt with by outlawing letting the smell get onto someone else’s property.
My city’s codes even specifically mention the smell of chickens and their coops because when the law against keeping farm animals in the city limits was changed to allow for keeping backyard hens the way to blow out the final argument from folks who wanted to keep people from having the freedom to have chickens by using the “I don’t want to smell coops” argument was to specifically outlaw the smell of chickens and their coops.
