Just over two years ago I bought my first home, a small apartment in Sydney's western suburbs. It was the realisation of a long-held dream... That is, until the folks in the apartment adjacent to mine moved in.
It took about five minutes for me to discover that they were smokers. I discovered this because when they stood out on their balcony enjoying a durry their cigarette smoke drifted straight into my apartment.
Now, I've never smoked. I hate cigarette smoke. I hate the smell of it, I hate the fact that it gave my grandmother the lung cancer which killed her over 10 years ago, and, knowing what I do about the extensive scientific data regarding the damage second hand cigarette smoke does to those who breathe it in, I hate the fact that, time after time throughout the day, it infiltrates the home I worked so hard to buy.
And there's little I can do about the last. The only way I can keep cigarette smoke out of my home (and this isn't always 100% effective, depending on the strength of the wind and its direction) is by shutting the doors and windows on whichever side of the house the breeze is coming from. Now, as if it wasn't bad enough to be deprived of a little fresh air (and as someone who has always slept, eaten, studied, worked and relaxed with all windows and doors wide open, often even in the middle of winter, this is quite bad enough), shutting the cooling summer breezes out of a north-west facing apartment which feels like a blast furnace on the best of days because they often carry a dangerous mix of cigarette-smoke chemicals courtesy of the boys next door arguably constitutes a downright nuisance, infringing as it does on the right to quiet enjoyment of my property.
However, there don't seem to be too many other options at this stage. Complaints to the neighbours and to my strata company achieved little. As far as they were concerned, this was my problem. I don't think this is acceptable. After all, the recent Orica mine leak in Newcastle wasn't considered acceptable, nor was the discovery of dangerous levels of radioactive waste in Hunters Hill and these were both just one-off situations affecting limited numbers of people.
But smoking, it seems, is a special case. We know it's dangerous, whether undertaken directly or foisted upon us in a passive smoking situation like the one I have. We know it's dangerous enough to have introduced legislation to ban smoking in covered public spaces like train stations and in private cars on public roads when a young person is present. But when you get into a domestic dwelling situation, the law falls apart when trying to deal with the smokers who feel they should be entitled to smoke on property they legally call their own, and the non-smokers who, as a result, are repeatedly subjected to the nuisance of cigarette smoke drift.
The law in Australia at least hasn't yet figured out what to do with these kinds of situations, rather proving itself to be pretty useless in dealing with them in the past (although there are, in theory, remedies available, their effectiveness, as in the case of strata companies banning smoking is doubtful and private legal action, the big gun in cases like this, is expensive, stressful and often takes a fair bit of time - you can see why it's often just easier for people to move in order to escape the problem), and I suspect it's something that is going to need a few courageous souls pursuing justice through litigious routes in order to get any meaningful change in this area. Unfortunately, as with so many things, the foreseeability of damage won't be enough to effect change - it's going to require damage to be done. Pity there aren't penalties for this kind of systematic negligence.