HUD "Strongly Encourages" Smoking Ban in Public Housing
Describes Deadly Health Risks, Fire Danger, Added Costs

The Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] released a memo in which it "strongly encouraged" all public housing authorities to ban smoking in their individual housing units, citing the deadly health hazards, the increased risk of fires and fire deaths, and the added cost to fumigate a unit formerly occupied by a smoker, notes Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the nation's leading nonsmokers' rights organization. http://ash.org/HUDmemo

HUD explains that "Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) can migrate between units in multifamily housing, causing respiratory illness, heart disease, cancer, and other adverse health effects."  The agency estimates that over half of all public housing residents could be at increased health risk because of their ages, and that there are also many additional tenants with "chronic diseases such as asthma and cardiovascular disease who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of ETS."

HUD warns that "Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) can migrate between units in multifamily housing, causing respiratory illness, heart disease, cancer, and other adverse health effects in neighboring families," and that "secondhand smoke lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and can migrate between units in multifamily buildings."

HUD notes that "smoking is also the leading cause of fires and fire-related deaths and injuries. . . . there were an estimated 18,700 smoking- material fires in homes in 2006. These fires caused 700 civilian deaths (other than firefighters’), and 1,320 civilian injuries, and $496 million in direct property damage  . . .   In multifamily buildings, smoking is the leading cause of fire deaths: 26 percent of fire deaths in 2005."

Finally, HUD says that "it is well known that turnover costs are increased when apartments are vacated by smokers. Additional paint to cover smoke stains, cleaning of the ducts, replacing stained window blinds, or replacing carpets that have been damaged by cigarettes can increase the cost to make a unit occupant ready."

In addition to encouraging condo and apartment building to ban smoking in individual units, ASH has also developed a number of legal theories under which nonsmokers can sue the building owners/operators, and the smoking tenants, if their units are invaded by tobacco smoke.

Indeed, ASH provides this legal information to nonsmoking tenants faced with drifting and re-circulating tobacco smoke, and in some cases assists them in taking legal actions - many of which have already been successful. 

For example, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) recently assisted in protecting two nonsmokers in Dallas from tobacco smoke which was drifting into their home from a adjoining townhouse.  The nonsmokers obtained a court order prohibiting the neighbor from smoking in her own home. http://ash.org/dallastro

"A man's home may be his castle, but that doesn't mean he is free to smoke in it if the smoke drifts into a neighbor's castle," says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, Chief Counsel of ASH, who assisted in the Dallas litigation and in many other tenant-smoking legal proceedings. 

Banzhaf also helped to develop legal theories under which judges in a majority of states have issued orders prohibiting smoking in private homes when necessary to protect children, and more than a dozen states to ban all smoking in homes when foster children are present.

In short, says Banzhaf, there is no legal right to smoke, even in one's own home, if the smoke puts others at risk.