To smoke in my own garden

[LittleBear4]

I am a smoker. I smoke 10 fags a day and I'm not planning on giving it up yet (one day!).

In smoke in my garden, I've got two neighbours either side and one every time I'm smoking will come out and say 'it stinks out here' and will start to cough loudly.

It's really getting on my nerves, I can't move down the end of the garden because it's tiny and would make no difference at all but AIBU to hate the passive aggressive comments when I'm smoking in my garden?

hmm interesting. I think there are several chemicals in fags that you would not otherwise encounter...certainly no nicotine released by chicken skin!

Acetaldehyde is one of the highest concentrations, but will also pick up anyone with a hangover, so not great.

Hydrazine looks like a good one though....picks up smokers and people who have recently been in a car accident where the air bags went off...

I gave up smoking at Christmas and I never noticed the smell before, I can now smell it coming from the neighbours garden as soon as I open the back door, I never realised how much it stank before, can smell it on people when I'm in queues etc, yuk, embarrassed how much I must of stank of it now x

I’m sorry, you’re right. There’s literally no difference between class A drugs in your vicinity, and something you can buy in the corner shop. Silly me.

Frankly, the smell of your crack would be the least of my concerns, given the criminal behaviour that’s linked to the use of crack and the fact I live next door with small children. I’d be equally concerned about a neighbour shooting up in the garden, and there’s no smoke at all.

Yes OP, you should definitely go for a walk and leave your children at home every time you want a cigarette. I’m sure MN would be more tolerant of that.

Flamey admittedly I was young when I started smoking but I remember going to visit family who smoked and the smell wasn’t as bad as I find it at the moment.

I think ex-smokers are even more sensitive to the smell, especially those who’ve quit quite recently. After about 8 months of not smoking the smell didn’t affect me as much - you can still smell it obviously, but I know that the first few months of quitting the smell causes quite an extreme reaction for me.

(And yet I still don’t go mental if my neighbours smoke in their garden - it’s the bonfires right next to the house and the cat poo that make want to kill, although I shall continue to resist)

SinkGirl, what if she upsets a random passer by with her fag smoke while she’s out on her walks?!😱. What if they say “do it in your own garden”?

Consider yourself lucky you live in an era when you can still smoke tobacco without risk of being arrested.

When our children grow up and elect politicians, you won’t.

Yes I care about my children more than my neighbours, shocking I know.

If you care about your children, just stop. My DH lost both his parents prematurely due to lung cancer. He hates the smell of smoke because it reminds him of pleading with them to stop, hiding their fags and them still deciding to continue.

Yes, I’m sure successive governments will be champing at the bit to throw out the well over £10bn surplus they have in tax revenue after they’ve paid to treat smoking related illness (and I’m sure they’ll be delighted to pay for the ongoing healthcare, pensions and social care of those who would have died early as a result of smoking). Public pressure may well lead to the eradication of the use of fossil fuels and certainly of petrol and diesel cars in my lifetime, and from the statistics its likely that within a couple of generations smoking will be sufficiently useless at generating tax to be banned outright. It’s certainly not yet and won’t happen before then.

Spot on LuvSmallDogs.

@sinkgirl I'd never get upset at my neighbour, he isn't well and spends most of his life in a great deal of pain, I'm actually quite happy with the fact it doesn't make me fancy a cigarette which at first worried, do hope the over sensitive smell receptors pack it in soon though x

Christ alive...Again, how do people still not understand the dramatic difference between smoking in an enclosed space indoors, and smoking outside? Anyone who has even a basic grasp of science should understand this, it’s not difficult.

Or to engage their critical thinking skills, apparently 🙄🙄

^^this

@SinkGirl. You had a good try at explaining but some people really like to misuse research findings and apply where it isn't applicable to OP's situation. And oh, the handwringing continued..!!

Occasional smell = not nice ☑️
But 'I'm catching your cancer' comments are just 🙄🤔🤔🥴

@LuvSmallDogs

I don't smoke, but I'd still rather my neighbours smoke outdoors than indoors where their kids are.

@littlebear4 oh but it’s okay for you to smoke outside when other peoples children may be inhaling your disgusting secondhand smoke?? What a joke.

I personally feel that although there is nothing to stop you smoking in your own garden, it does stink and can be a real problem for neighbours.
We have a similar issue with one of our neighbours except he smokes something a little more herbal shall we say. We have 2 LO's and it smells so bad that they often can't play outside and you can even smell it in the house when we leave the windows open!

As much as you are entitled to do it they are entitled to be against it.

@Ihatehashtags
They aren't though are they? OP hasn't said there are DC right next door nor that she waits exactly until DC are out and smokes it blowing in their faces ...
If you'd done a science GSCE at all you'd understand dispersal behaviour of vapour. And just think it through a bit more ... about the tiny smoke wafts from a cigarette from a light smoker, generally DCs are small and near the ground, the way cigarette gas molecules behave in open air, unlike denser smoke from bonfires and exhaust fumes....

Cannabis will be legal soon so more tax revenues for the government. I wouldn't worry too much about reduced tax revenues on fags.

Cannabis better not be legal soon. It turns fully functioning adults into total losers...

Don’t try and use science OffToBedhampton, clearly there’s lots of people here that either have not even the most basic grasp of science, or are wilfully pretending they don’t so they can be outraged.

Ridiculous.

flamey sorry, I didn’t mean you’d be angry / nasty, just some of the other crazy comments here! I’m sure it will improve soon. Weirdly, when I quit because I was pregnant, the smell of cigarettes was amazing - it was the only craving I had during pregnancy and they smelled so good that whenever I passed one I wanted to cry. It was torture! All my vivid pregnancy dreams were about smoking. My brain is such a twat. Not surprised I started again once they were born and in NICU (extremely traumatic time all round), but I’m done now and not going back. Hope you can stick it out - I know I’m someone who can never ever smoke again.

Cannabis will be legal soon so more tax revenues for the government. I wouldn't worry too much about reduced tax revenues on fags.

I’m not worried. I was pointing out why the government don’t ban it, and are unlikely to until the cost of smoking outweighs the revenue.

Cannabis will be made legal soon, I agree. And as much as I concur that it does make people into massively insufferable arseholes with regular use, I see no reason why alcohol should be legal and taxable and cannabis shouldn’t - alcohol also turns people into insufferable twats with regular use and has awful health implications.

off and yet if you can smell it then it obviously hasn't dispersed fully has it?

Enough to smell, is too much for people who don't choose to inhale the toxins.

There is, as has been pointed out, no safe limit for cigarette smoke. So every time you get a whiff of someone else's smoke you are indeed increasing your risk of cancer. Not by much...in fact by a tiny tiny amount. But it is a real effect, and will be responsible for at least some deaths given the size of the population.

There is absolutely no doubt that pollution from other sources will be causing far more deaths....but if you take that argument to its logical conclusion then its okay to murder the odd person because RTAs kill a lot more people each year....which doesn't really make it okay.

I also agree that alcohol is a bigger social menace. And pet ownership can get to fuck too (with reference to the complaints about cat shit earlier in the thread).

I think future generations will look back at us condoning the wholesale cruelty to animals and environmental devastation endemic in the meat industry in order to feed our pets with a similar level of historical moral judgement to that which we tend to apply to those that condoned and profited by the slave trade.

Of course said future generations will be judging us from the underground bunkers they now have to live in due to the Venus like toxic planetary atmosphere they have inherited, so they'll be pretty justified in their moral outrage....

Come and live next door to me OP. I smoke in my garden as does my OH. I smoke a pipe too.
The needle on my give-a-shit- O meter barely flickers for my neighbours opinions.
I don't particularly like being woken early on a sunday morning by my neighbour shouting and screaming at his wife, but hey ho.
Your neighbours sound like the type who wanted smoking banning in pubs and then complained about people smoking in the beer garden when they want to sit in it in the good weather.
Strangely, you never hear them complaining when they don't want to sit in it in the winter.
Carry on puffing OP and ignore the miserable twats.

I think future generations will look back at us condoning the wholesale cruelty to animals and environmental devastation endemic in the meat industry in order to feed our pets with a similar level of historical moral judgement to that which we tend to apply to those that condoned and profited by the slave trade.

Of course said future generations will be judging us from the underground bunkers they now have to live in due to the Venus like toxic planetary atmosphere they have inherited, so they'll be pretty justified in their moral outrage....

Agreed!

@M3lon
That's not taking something to "the logical conclusion" though is it? That's exagorating ridiculously far to make something illogical.

There is, as has been pointed out, no safe limit for cigarette smoke. So every time you get a whiff of someone else's smoke you are indeed increasing your risk of cancer. Not by much...in fact by a tiny tiny amount. But it is a real effect, and will be responsible for at least some deaths given the size of the population.

I really have to ask if this is a serious statement.

Of course there is no known safe amount of cigarette smoke. How would science establish what the safe amount is, do you think? A control group exposed to no smoke ever, and then a group exposed to varying amounts of cigarette smoke in an outdoor setting (how would you measure how much they’re getting?) but never otherwise exposed to any smoke ever, and then see how many develop an illness as a result, while factoring in all other risk factors?

It’s like alcohol in pregnancy - they say there’s no safe amount of alcohol in pregnancy because there’s no way to know. That doesn’t mean that ingesting a tiny amount of alcohol during pregnancy is dangerous.

I also just want to clarify that you are certain that exposure to very small quantities of second hand smoke in an outdoor environment must cause cancer in some people - is that actually what you believe and if so, where is the evidence of that?