I had a feeling something like this would happen...
Apartments and condos could be the next battle line, NBC 4's Patrick Preston reported.
Tamara Williams, a Delaware apartment dweller, said that she is concerned about her kids' health and her own asthma because of the smell of cigarette smoke that creeps into her home.
"My husband gets up and he puts towels under the kids' bedroom so they don't get affected," she said. "That's just ridiculous."
The smell of smoke comes from the bathroom, and the likely source is a neighboring family that smokes, Preston reported.
Right now my children are getting bathed in the kitchen because I don't want them exposed to smoke in the bathroom," Williams said.
According to Micah Berman, executive director of the Tobacco Policy Center, studies have shown that in muti-unit apartment buildings more than half of the air going through any apartment comes from another unit.
After complaining to her apartment complex for weeks, the company has finally allowed Williams to break her lease early.
Currently, there are no smoke-free apartment complexes in Columbus, and it's nearly impossible to get added protection in your lease.
California and New York lawmakers have tried to restrict smoking in apartments statewide. They have failed so far, but last month, the city of Belmont, California voted to ban smoking in apartment and condos that share a wall or ceiling whenever a neighbor complains.
But not everyone seems to think that such an act is reasonable.
"It almost seems like they're trying to harass smokers now," Andrew Korybko, a smoker, said. "It's almost like a modern day type of prohibition."
Many Ohio smokers said that their rights were already violated by last year's ban on smoking in bars and restaurants.
But Micah Berman disagrees.
"There's no constitutional right to smoke," he said. "So there's no legal right to smoke if it's interfering with someone else's rights."
Instead of seeking a change in state law, Berman is trying to convince apartment owners to go smoke-free voluntarily as a way to cut clean-up costs and lower fire risk.
It's a choice that Tamara Williams would have liked.
"I know a lot of people say 'it's my right to smoke', well, it's my right to breathe," she said.
posted by J. at 12:33 AM
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