The Next Step for Smoking Bans

For those of you who are wondering where the smoking ban mania will reach next, look no further than this story. 

But for Anna Maria Gabriel, who lives in West Bend Terrace Apartments, the biggest drawback isn’t noisy neighbors, but rather their smoking habits, which she claims is polluting the air in her unit.

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“By this summer I was totally surrounded by smokers,” she said. “I told (the manager) that the purifier wasn’t handling it. I was getting no response. They knew that I was a nonsmoker and they were surrounding me with smokers.”

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Gabriel claims she is still “choking” because of the cigarette odor. To breathe clean air, Gabriel said she invested in a $795 air purifier, which seems to be working.

The justifications for the smoking ban are:

1) Smoking kills and people who choose not to smoke have a right to breathe smoke-free air.

2) People who work in heretofore smoky areas shouldn’t have to do so.

Why can’t these justifications be applied to apartments or houses that are close together?  They can, and they will.

We are barrelling toward a point where the only people who will be allowed to smoke are single people who live in the dead center of a 100 acre farm.

On a related note…

In this same story, the behavior of the woman who doesn’t like smoke demonstrates just how little responsibility some people take for their own lives. 

“She wrote a letter and said there was smoke coming up from her bathroom fan, cigarette smoke,” said Haas. “I contacted an electrician on January 30 and asked him to set up a call with Anna to have it checked out.”

Haas said a date was set but that Gabriel cancelled the appointment at the last minute. She said Gabriel was given “numerous choices” to set up an alternate appointment with the electrician, but Gabriel claimed she couldn’t commit to a date until March.

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Gabriel asked the management to reimburse her for the air purifier, but was refused, she said. So, Gabriel decided to withhold part of her rent until the air purifier was paid for, citing a Wisconsin statute to back up her claim. She also hired an attorney, who de-clined to comment for this story.

The landlord schedules an electrician to accomodate the woman, but she cancels the appointment and can’t find time to reschedule it.  Then she buys an air purifier and seems to think that the landlord should pay for it.  Notice a pattern?  In her mind, her problems are always somebody else’s responsibility.  It is exactly that kind of mentality that leads to people supporting things like smoking bans.

Posted by Owen at 0816 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin