I’m all for more controlled studies. But the burden of proof should fall on those claiming health risks, not those skeptical of the health risks. It’s bad science to say X causes Y until you prove otherwise. And with tobacco, the causation is overwhelmingly firmly established. The much less prolific data on cannabis points toward much lower health risks.
To be fair, what corporations chemically do to tabacco is pretty evil.
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No. Plenty of people live in apartments, as rentals or as owners, for years, often until they die. They are very much homes. 
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I hear you, but it doesn’t work. Even if you put aside the infantilization and ugly nanny aspects, it doesn’t even solve the problem.
I rent my apartment. It is the second floor of freestanding building. I smoked for years here, and verified that downstairs never even noticed. Zero problems.
But wait! you say. I’m simply one of the costs of legislative imprecision who must unfortunately bear the costs of imperfect civil society.
So what of my friends, who own their part of a duplex? They’re free to annoy the crap out of their co-owner.
Our fucking nanny overlords are out over their skis again, and not liking smoking is a bad reason to go along with this. Like I said earlier, I fully expect this to be challenged, and I will contribute.
If someone wants to tell me what to do in my home, I will be happy to explain to them exactly what the can do with that attitude in theirs, in as much detail as required.
I’m one of them. But due to our proximity to each other, “do what ever you want” (which I’m generally a fan of) has more and more things that impede on your neighbors. Where does one’s rights to live how they want end when they disrupt the life of someone else?
And in the case of renters, you don’t own the apartment, though I understand there are some buildings where ownership of specific units is possible.
Should this be codified? I dunno. It is a bit understandable some feel it needs to be.
Like I said, generally a big fan of this. But “annoy the crap” out of your duplex or apartment neighbors doesn’t seem either reasonable or a tenable situation either. With separate homes the threshold of what is acceptable is much higher. Apartments mean one has to sometimes put up with things like: (and this is just an example of things I have had to tolerate) thumping bass at 3am, noxious weed fumes every single day when I get home from work, and fights loud enough I am wondering if I should call the cops or something.
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I’m a big believer in discussion, compromise and self-help. Or are you suggesting SF also ban domestic arguments?
Sometimes there are bad situations and people shouldn’t live near each other. You can’t outlaw incompatibility. Attempting to do so just creates bigger messes and creates legal weapons that inevitably are used against those who can’t fight back.
And worse, it tells people using law to dictate lifestyle is acceptable. If it is fine for you to effectively make me quit smoking, why wouldn’t it be fine for me to retaliate by working to ban something you annoy me with? We’re not going to draw the ‘noxious’ line at the same place.
The article you cited showed that vaping was the most successful of the smoking cessation tools. The scientific consensus among tobacco harm reduction specialists is that nicotine is at least 95% safer than smoking. Most people who vape were former smokers.
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“Home” <> “house”. Yes, apartments are homes.
I have long felt that nobody under the age of 30 should be allowed to own/operate a subwoofer in any residence with shared walls.
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OK - good point, I meant house. The person I replied to use home when they meant house as well.
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Way to make a law that primarily impacts lower income people who can’t afford a Bay Area home.
People like to accuse California, and San Francisco specifically, of being socialists. But really, we have lots of socially-unaware laws here. We’re idiots like everybody else.
Isn’t that anyone who makes under a quarter million a year now?
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That is an entirely fair question. There isn’t an easy answer, but it’s certainly not that people who own shit are somehow more entitled than others.
But if rights are tied to ownership, then we really do live in a society that will never be equal. Seems to me that we can do better than tie humanity to wealth.
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Good.
Cigarettes smell awful. At least pot smoke smell is pleasant and easier to remove.
I think the burden of proof falls on anyone making a claim. Whether you claim there is a health risk or claim there is no health risk, you are making a testable claim, and should be ready to cite tests. Even a claim like “noone has proved that …” is testable, and that sort of claim shouldn’t be made without carrying a thorough literature review.
One of the reasons I bother reading comments on BoingBoing is that so many of the authors are careful to flag when they’re propounding a theory that doesn’t yet have clear evidence, or for which they haven’t had time to check for evidence. And of course another reason I bother reading comments is that when this happens another writer will often supply links to good evidence.
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To you maybe, but smell is a personal thing.
To me, the smell of coffee is repulsive. But when I’ve asked others who don’t drink coffee they’ve mostly been neutral to the smell. Maybe only those who like the smell become coffee drinkers?? Maybe someone can provide a link to a study about whether addiction to a substance affects how the sense of smell reacts to that substance. I have read that some alcoholics don’t like the taste of alcohol, but that was in the popular press and didn’t cite evidence.
Diesel marijuana refers to a specific type of cannabis, which typically has a sativa effect and an odor that smells like diesel fuel.
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I’m on board with banning the source of this type of air pollution. There was a comment thread recently here on BB from a scented candle post where folks talked about their olfactory sensitivities. I would claim that I am one of those, to some degree.
I college, I lived in an apartment on the second floor where my downstairs neighbors smoked. It sucked hard, it pissed me off that I’d have to breathe their stench whenever they wanted me to. Luckily, they didn’t stay there long.
Once, I bought a house in a fairly distant location and only got to see it/tour it once. The day I took possession, when I opened the front door, I was overwhelmed by the stench of decades of smoker. Turns out, the previous owners, elderly, who lived there for 40 years, were avid smokers. When I toured the house before buying, the windows were all open, ceiling fans running, air freshener deployed and I didn’t notice the filth. The surprise pissed me off something awful. I had the idea that in all the disclosures that sellers have to do here in California, they should also have to state if smokers lived there. Not if someone once smoked in the house, but if smokers lived there. I didn’t pursue it with the realtors or seller since she was an old widow with health problems of her own. I just spent days washing every surface, getting the ducts professionally cleaned, tossing the drapes and replacing the cigarette burned carpet. Sorry, tobacco smokers, on this, I just fine with you being nannied.
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I’m not a regular smoker any more except for the occasional cigar, but this reminds me of a conference I attended a few years back in Ann Arbor. I was having a beer with other attendees and we stepped out for a cigarette. We left the bar, followed the signs thirty feet away from the door, and stood on the city sidewalk. Within thirty seconds of lighting up, some sort of cop/hall monitor rolls up on a segway to tell us that the entire U of M property is non-smoking, but if we’d be so kind as to walk a quarter mile to the north…
