to expect to stay in a hotel without being exposed to Cannabis smoke?

[Hangingbellyofbabylon]

Dh, 3 young dds and I stayed at an Express by Holiday Inn last Friday night. Towards the end of the evening I started to smell smoke - we checked all of the appliances in the room as it was strong but couldn't find a source. Gradually I began to think it was the smell of cannabis but Dh kept on insisting it couldn't be as they were non-smoking rooms and it would have set off the smoke alarm. I was feeling quite woozy at this point and in the end we both fell asleep. Had a rough night with the children waking up coughing and I just felt like I had the worst hangover.

In the morning when we went down for breakfast the room next door still smelled really strongly and in fact the whole corridoor did. I felt woozy at breakfast and after rang reception. They said they had had a number of complaints about the 'cannabis situation' and had asked the people in the room to stop . They also promised to contact me later to discuss a refund - we had paid in advance for the room. When we checked out I was asked to leave my mobile number and could only remember half of it, I also couldn't manage my chip and pin at the cash point. Thank goodness I wasn't driving because I was utterly out of it. I know from one regretfull incident at university that cannabis and I do not make a good mix and I would never expose my children to cannabis smoke.

Since then I have rung daily and always been told there is no manager in and that they will ring back. I have mild asthma that rarely causes me problems but I've been really chesty since then. I just can't believe that if it was a problem reported by a number of people they couldn't have done anything about it. I wish I hadn't been so doped up on the Friday night or I would have made more fuss then and there.

entropy: of course a hotel has no duty to enforce its rules! You said it right there yourself, its rules. Hotels have a duty to enforce ass sorts of H&S regulations, but they can change their house rules at will or ignore them altogether.

Smoking in hotels is legally allowed. Smoking/non-smoking rooms are also not a legally binding category or anything. A non-smoking room is a request that most hotels will do their very best to honour - but if they cannot allocate one they are completely within their right to put you into a room usually given to smokers just as they may arbitrarily (okay, room allocations are a bloody science in a large hotel) upgrade you to the presidential suite.

In fact, smoking penalties added to bills have a pretty good chance of being refunded if guests complain enough as it's simply going to be pretty difficult to prove (housekeepers don't routinely takr crime scene photos of dirty rooms).

I didn't realise hotels still had smoking rooms

Some hotels have smoking rooms, some do not.

Ah, I must have inhaled a great deal of cannabis smoke drifting up from the living room as a child. Never did me any harm.
I could murder a joint having read this though.

nativity are you my sister?

It is entirely possible NotADude...

Is it possible you were having a migraine from all the stress of other things going on OP? When I get migraines, even if they don't fully come on, I get heightened sensitivity to smells, inability to remember words and slurring, dizziness and wooziness... it is possible you might have been getting a migraine, but didn't realise as the smell of Cannabis made you think it was related to that...

ahh good point about the rules....I am surprised the smoking laws dont affect hotels though...don't the staff have the same right to work in a smoke free environment as everyone else?

It only actually affects bedrooms. You can't allow smoking in your bar/restaurant/lobby/conference rooms etc.

AFAIK the reasoning is that it's sort of like a temporary residence. Therefore the hotel as the landlord may or may not permit smoking just like the owner of a rental property. Also, I guess you could argue that bedrooms are nobody's permanent place of work - but I'm really not an expert on the legal bits.

TBH, I always used to prefer working for hotels that permitted smoking inside (or on a terrace) for one simple reason: If guests can't smoke inside, they'll do it in front of your main entrance, you constantly have to have a housekeeper on standby to clean up. IMO it also generally detracts from the super poised image that luxury hotels seek to project to have a bunch of stressed looking, puffing conference delegates destroying the view of your magnificent lobby. But then I'm the sort of person who used to have issues with papers lying on the reception desk

Should also add: you do have to designate your rooms as smoking rooms for it to be legal.

However, I am aware of at least one London 5* property that has smartly circumvented this by legally designating all rooms as smoking rooms and simply keeping an internal roster of should usually be allocated as what.

Maybe you hallucinated the receptionist saying there was a cannabis situation and they would discuss a refund.

Must have been some damn good shit.

OP, last week a client of my husband's gifted us with tickets to a Kanye-West/Jay-Z concert. Rap is not my bag usually but I went along to be polite. We had a fantastic box with all the amenities but right in front of our box were a row of teenage boys smoking pot. I was so sick from the fumes blowing right into our faces that I got the chills and shakes and we had to go. I know it was from the weed because I experienced similar symptoms during my singular adolescent foray into illegal smokeable plants. I felt sick for two days after that.

YANBU. A hotel is an enclosed space. Smoking / Non-smoking designated rooms mean nothing. If there is smoking allowed inside the hotel, you will be breathing it too.

We had a fantastic box with all the amenities but right in front of our box were a row of teenage boys smoking pot

A row of boys, right in front of you, and just below you ... with no brick wall or doors.... yep, you would get the smoke rising up to you. That I would agree with, and if they were smoking skunk, it could easily affect you as you were so close to it.

Hotel room, air con OR under the door (which would have been coming out from another door, then travelling along the corridor, and going under the OPs door... absolutely impossible for it to have any effect. Zero chance.

Since the full moon was a couple of days ago I'm putting all the hysterical billy-bullshitting on MN down to the high winds. Or biorhythms. Or something.

No one told the teenage boys to give it a rest with the illegal drugs? Where was this? Not disputing you, just curious.

No they didn't. It was in The Air Canada Centre and it's definitely not allowed. I think because of where we were sitting there was less security presence and I didn't make a fuss because I'm a wimp we were with friends, colleagues, clients etc. I was most definitely STONED via the second hand smoke.

Depending on the age and condition of the building OP was in and the ventilation systems contained within, I'd say it's definitely possible.

Holiday Inn Express are always new buildings, with decent ventilation systems.

I wont dispute that close proximity to the smoke can affect people, as I know it can. But they would have to be in the same room as the OP, not a few doors, or floors down.

I have thought about your situation OP. I doubt you were high, but you could be sick. I can feel sick and can be congested for a couple of days from someone coming into my home wearing a scent, as well as fabric softener on their clothing. My son's gf can't breath if he wears a certain deodorant, he switched of course. I can smell someone across the street having a smoke from inside my house with the windows closed.

They could have moved you to a different room on a different floor had you gone down to the desk and requested it, with your complaint of smelling smoke.
You have to complain while it is happening, otherwise they can't really do anything to rectify the situation.

would love to know how many of the people on here who are CERTAIN that a smellable amount of cannabis could have no biochemical/physiological effect on the OP, also have a cupboard full of homeopathic remedies at home....

Well I am satisfied. I emailed the manager yesterday and received a reply today. He apologised and said that we were not the only family who had been left feeling unwell. He said that the receptionist should have offered a full refund that morning. He said that the people smoking were actually asked to leave the hotel in the early hours of the morning and that they had contacted the police. He has refunded us for the night and has also offered a free return visit to the hotel in the future.

Let's face it, I probably wasn't stoned from the second hand smoke but it was enough to make me feel ill and very uncomfortable that my children were exposed to it. It's a totally non-smoking hotel and tbh I would have been unhappy if it had been ordinary cigarette smoke. I go out of my way to avoid my children being near cigarette smoke, which is my personal choice.

I am still utterly shocked by how many people here seem to find it funny that illegal drugs were being used in a family hotel next to children. I had no idea that MN has such a lively drug culture. I'll say this only once, it's not big and it's not clever. "Just say no" And that is all I have to say on the matter.

"Just say no" Never really worked, did it?

Don't blame you for wanting to keep your DCs away from any kind of smoke/fumes, though. The wording in the OP was slightly hysterical, IMO.

ahh bless you,

maybe carbon monoxide poisoning from dodgy heaters? Doubt it was second hand smoke!

'I'll say this only once' allo allo