Via Anna Raccoon, a misleading story in the Tellytuybbygraph about smokers and renting private property.
More than 90 per cent of smokers are barred from renting a property, new figures have suggested.
Someone really should speak to their subbies about misleading article headers, because that isn’t what is being said – although what is is probably bad enough anyway.
What is being said is that private landlords are being picky when it comes to tenants and will not allow smoking in their property. Which as property owners is within their rights, of course.
It found a strong shift in attitude against smoking tenants among landlords following the smoking ban introduced in July 2007.
Just 7 per cent of landlords allow smoking in their property while 38 per cent said they will evict lodgers who smoke indoors, according to the survey by easyroommate.co.uk.
There are a couple of points that spring to mind here. The first is, as Anna points out; the de-normalising of smokers is continuing apace. Such is the pervasiveness of the anti-smoking propaganda that people have allowed it to seep into their very pores and it has become a part of the eco-system such that people don’t even question it – or themselves.
An anecdote here. When my parents bought a property in Bristol back in the seventies, my room had been used by the previous owner’s son. The man was a chain smoker and the evidence was there to see in the yellow stained walls, ceiling and paint-work, so this guy was serious about his habit. I’ve never seen anything quite this bad in smokers’ homes before or since. Remember, I live with a smoker – although Mrs L’s rollies are so innocuous, I’m barely aware that she is puffing away most of the time.
The solution to the stained room was cleaning and repainting. Problem solved. Of course, landlords could do this. They could write the costs of doing it, should it prove necessary, into their rental contract.
Another anecdote on a similar theme. When we were planning to let our home prior to moving to France, we were asked if we would allow pets. Now, pet owners will tell smokers a thing or two when it comes to being disbarred from renting. There have always been plenty of landlords who have a “no pets” rule. Some even have a “no children” rule, I am led to understand. We said that as we had pets, we had no problems with allowing tenants to have them. The normal arrangements regarding any damage would apply, so, no problem. It is, after all, someone’s home we are talking about here, regardless of who actually owns the bricks and mortar. I don’t take kindly to people telling me how to live my life, so I sure as hell won’t do it to other people. Providing the property is handed back as it was let, there is no problem as far as I am concerned.
Which brings me to my second point. The agent was not only pleased with this, she told us that we had opened ourselves up to a whole extra market, making letting our property that much easier. So, any landlord that takes a similarly relaxed view towards smoking is doubtless doing likewise. We were never asked about smoking, but our response would have been the same. Sure, and if it causes damage, you pay for it. Can’t say fairer than that.
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Update: Leg Iron mentions this and refers to comments about smell – as I have done briefly in the comments here. This reminds me of my grandparents. As a child I recall the faint odour that was always present in their house; a vague hangover from cooking mixed with tobacco smoke. It was just there on the edge of the senses, almost out of reach. It’s a smell that when I catch these days, transports me back some forty odd years to those childhood memories. Yes, peoples’ houses have odours. My sister’s house has a distinct parfum de chien about it. Might be something to do with the dog…
However, none of this is a problem. If you move into a house that has a faint tobacco smell, open the windows and it will dissipate quickly enough.
Smokers should get themselves some kind of association with a minority race, religion or sexual orientation. That would soon put a stop to this. Can you imagine anyone getting away with advertising “no curry-eaters”? Stinks just as much if done to excess, if you ask me. Or as little. Depending on your point of view/personal preference/level of righteous intolerance.
Aside from that, some anecdotal evidence:
#1 – we once turned our kitchen ceiling yellow by not cleaning the oven ‘frequently enough’, by which I mean hardly ever – how about “no lazy slobs”?
#2 – in my younger days, I lived in a flat for 7 years and subjected it to vast quantities of smoking. No yellowness or other smoke related damage (or even odour that lingered once the windows had been open a short time) was ever to be found there. You must have to put some pretty serious effort in to turn walls yellow. If you manage that, then as you say, a tiny amount of effort with some cleaning products and a tin of paint should see you right.
I believe this guy would sit all day in the room lighting one fag from the dog-end of the one he’d just finished.
Another myth
I have to be perfectly honest…staining of walls by someone smoking is a myth. Any discolouration usually occurs because of a lack of redecoration over a long period of time.
Both my parents smoked for decades…as well as myself at home…it never affected the paint-work.
This stuff was a residue that smelled of stale cigarettes. I can’t say how long since it had been redecorated, but this wasn’t the normal yellowing from age that you would normally expect. As I mentioned, this bloke was a serial smoker who probably didn’t have the windows open. Whatever, I do know what I had to help clean off before we started the painting. While he and his father both smoked, it was only the one room affected.
About time some asskicking and neck smacking started.
The vast majority of smokers are the types who dont need much to ruffle their feathers
All we need is some feather rufflers.
Dirty trick time has arrived ,take your pick,theres plenty
to go at.
UK – Landlord has NO ‘on demand’ right of entry even if flat is occupied. Tenants have a right to privacy and may change locks to enforce this if necessary. Landlord could be accused of breaking and entering. It might be his property but it is someone else’s home. He must give ‘reasonable notice’ of an inspection and his inspection should be no more than a statement of fixtures and fittings.
So how the hell could a landlord ‘catch’ a tenant smoking ?
Restrictions to renting a property past and present.
No Irish/Asian/blacks/gypsies/travellers/smokers/drinkers/fat people/ginger people/garlic eaters
You may be surprised to know that I have no problem whatsoever with landlords choosing not to entertain smokers (I seem to have gained a pro-smoking reputation, for some odd reason) 😉
Having said that, as you have rightly said, the downside of smoking tenants is vastly over-exaggerated and even then can be easily counteracted by a simple contract clause.
I used to live in a pub during the 80s when smoking was almost compulsory. We had one day a year where we would sugar soap the walls and ceiling. It took a couple of hours, no biggie.
Therefore, this …
“Such is the pervasiveness of the anti-smoking propaganda that people have allowed it to seep into their very pores and it has become a part of the eco-system such that people don’t even question it – or themselves.”
… is incredibly astute.
The new Tobacco Prohibition
I would like to take the time to tell the entire community about a falsehood so big that everyone who believes in freedom should be appauled.
This falsehood is so big it resonates from historical fact forward to this day. This falsehood is so big billions of dollars have been spent to make it believable to those of us who dont take the time to look up the facts.
We all remember reading about alcohol prohibition,but did you know there was also tobacco prohibition going on before alcohol became such a target of the last nanny staters.
Our great grandparents lived thru prohibition and the great depression,they also lived thru tobacco prohibition.
Heres a time line starting in 1900,dont be surprised to see the same thing playing out today nearly 100 years later.
1901: REGULATION: Strong anti-cigarette activity in 43 of the 45 states. “Only Wyoming and Louisiana had paid no attention to the cigarette controversy, while the other forty-three states either already had anti-cigarette laws on the books or were considering new or tougher anti-cigarette laws, or were the scenes of heavy anti- cigarette activity” (Dillow, 1981:10).
1904: New York: A judge sends a woman is sent to jail for 30 days for smoking in front of her children.
1904: New York City. A woman is arrested for smoking a cigarette in an automobile. “You can’t do that on Fifth Avenue,” the arresting officer says.
1907: Business owners are refusing to hire smokers. On August 8, the New York Times writes: “Business … is doing what all the anti-cigarette specialists could not do.”
1917: SMOKEFREE: Tobacco control laws have fallen, including smoking bans in numerous cities, and the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho and Tennessee.
1937: hitler institutes laws against smoking.This one you can google.
Now onto the falsehood……
We have been told for years by smoke free advocates that second hand smoke is the cause of everything from johnnys ear ache to cousin ED’S lung cancer. But wheres the proof!!!
Remember they claim 50,000 deaths a year yet,there are no bodys not even mass graves of the dead to second hand smoke.We await the names of these victims.
A simple stroll down historys road say 10 years or so and we start to get at the truth……
A federal Judge by the name of osteen got a case dropped in his lap in North Carolina,the case was that of EPA’S study on second hand smoke/environmental tobacco smoke.The judge an anti-tobbaco judge by reputation spent 4 years going thru the study and interviewing scientists at EPA and came to the conclusion :
JUNK SCIENCE
”EPA’s 1992 conclusions are not supported by reliable scientific evidence. The report has been largely discredited and, in 1998, was legally vacated by a federal judge.Before its 1992 report, EPA had always used epidemiology’s gold standard CI of 95 percent to measure statistical significance. But because the U.S. studies chosen[cherry picked] for the report were not statistically significant within a 95 percent CI, for the first time in its history EPA changed the rules and used a 90 percent CI, which doubled the chance of being wrong.
This allowed it to report a statistically significant 19 percent increase [a 1.19rr] of lung cancer cases in the nonsmoking spouses of smokers over those cases found in nonsmoking spouses of nonsmokers. Even though the RR was only 1.19–an amount far short of what is normally required to demonstrate correlation or causality–the agency concluded this was proof SHS increased the risk of U.S. nonsmokers developing lung cancer by 19 percent.”
The EPA fought to have Osteen’s decision overturned on technical grounds, ignoring the multitude of facts in the decision. They succeeded in 2002 on the narrowest of technicalities. The fourth circuit court of appeals ruled that because the report was not an official policy document Osteen’s court did not have jurisdiction. In their appeal the EPA did not answer a single criticism in the 92 page report, nor challenge a single fact put forth by Judge Osteen. Not one.
Although the anti-smoker movement was already established, this report was used, and continues to be used, to bolster their claim that SHS is a killer.
http://knol.google.com/k/second-hand-smoke #
So here we find that second hand smoke was made a political scapegoat by EPA.Lets not forget how EPA has reworked the global warming studys just this last summer. Where its top scientists paper was rebuked because it didnt carry the EPA’S stand that global warming was real.
The political shenanigans surrounding SHS/ETS go deep not only with the government and its health agencies but also to the big pharmaceutical companies and non-profit orginizations aka ACS,ALA,AHA and a meriad of others. All lobbying for smoking bans and their weapon of choise Propaganda paid for by big pharma and tax dollars. Studys made to order that second hand smoke is deadly. Take a memory note here too,over 250 studys on shs/ets have found it safe.
Yet a simple look at the chemistry shows us that its:
About 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a minor amount of carbon dioxide. The volume of water vapor of second hand smoke becomes even larger as it qickly disperses into the air,depending upon the humidity factors within a set location indoors or outdoors. Exhaled smoke from a smoker will provide 20% more water vapor to the smoke as it exists the smokers mouth.
4 % is carbon monoxide.
6 % is those supposed 4,000 chemicals to be found in tobacco smoke. Unfortunatley for the smoke free advocates these supposed chemicals are more theorized than actually found.What is found is so small to even call them threats to humans is beyond belief.Nanograms,picograms and femptograms……
(1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80).
Now, how odd that when we search the smoke free activists sites not one of them mentions that water vapor and air are the main components of second hand smoke. Is this just a fluke or an outright omission to further their political healthscare against the general public.
The last informative tid bit I have for you is what does OSHA have to say about all this secondhand smoke stuff.
Here is where it gets interesting,it seems John Banzhaf, founder and president of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) decided to sue OSHA to make a rule on shs/ets not that OSHA didnt want to play ball with him,its just that the scientific facts didnt back up a rule to start with.
Now for a rule to happen Osha has to send out for comments for a period of time and boy did the comments fly in, over 40,000 of them….Osha has whats called PEL’S and limits for an 8 hour period of exposure to chemicals in indoor environments…[epa is in charge of outdoor air]some smoke free groups have tried to use 30 minute air samples using epa monitoring to create a air borne healthscare.
The actual standard to use is OSHA’S
The EPA standard is to be used for OUTSIDE ambient air quality and it is the average over a period of 3 years.
The proper standard to compare to is the OSHA standard for indoor air quality for respirable particulate (not otherwise specified) for nuisance dusts and smoke. That standard is 5000 ug/m3 on a time-weighted average (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) and is intended to be protective of health over an average working life of 30 years!
This is where second hand smoke really becomes a joke,remember its nearly 90% water vapor and air…..now lets get to the facts of toxicology and dose makes the poison:
According to independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke……..
They did the figures for what it takes to meet all of OSHA’S minimum PEL’S on shs/ets…….Did it ever set the debate on fire.
They concluded that:
All this is in a small sealed room 9×20 and must occur in ONE HOUR.
For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes
“For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes
“Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.
Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up.
“For Hydroquinone, “only” 1250 cigarettes
For arsenic 2 million 500,000 smokers at one time
The same number of cigarettes required for the other so called chemicals in shs/ets will have the same outcomes.
So,OSHA finally makes a statement on shs/ets :
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997
WHAT! DILUTED BELOW PERMISSABLE LEVELS
By the way ASH dropped their lawsuit because OSHA was going to make a rule and that rule would have been weak and been the law of the land,meaning no smoking bans would ever have been enacted anywhere,simply because an open window or a ventilation system would have covered the rule.
Let me also tell you that the relative risk for shs/ets by the SG report of 2006 was a 1.19 ”EPA study is whats used to call it a carcinogen”……milks is a 2.43 and that glass of chlorinated water your about to drink is a 1.25 yet these things aren’t determined to be a carcinogen….The gold standard in epidemiology is a 3.0….Now had the SURGEON GENERAL included 2 other shs/ets studys the relative risk for disease from shs/ets would have been nearer a.60-.70 meaning it would have a protective effect against ever getting disease.
But,what each of us has is years and years of exposure and the knowledge that our kids all grew up around shs and generations of others,yet we are here alive not dead from a lousy 30 minute exposure to shs as stanton glantz tries to claim…..thats another story and its just as crazy as all the rest of smokefree’s claim about shs/ets.
Oh! have you heard the one about ”laugh” thirdhand smoke or third hand drinking.
Like I said their claims border beyond that of any reasonable persons commomsence.
The next time you see a healthscare claim
consider the source.Especially if it comes from a government or non profit agency!
It is also the LANDLORDS right to pick and choose who he wants infesting HIS property.
Whilst I would not ban smokers myself, he has every right to do so.
As a landlord I have had a lot worse than people who smoked as tenants, as Longrider wrote, as long as the flat is returned in the same condition as at the beginning of the contract I have no issue with people smoking, building motorcycles, eating curries or any other normal legal activities in their home, in effect as long as they don’t upset the neighbours ( I have had a few phone calls from irate neighbours over the behaviour of bad tenants ) and pay the rent I have no desire to see the place unless work has to be done, I have to say how happy I am not to be living in such an unpleasant and bigoted country as the U.K.