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Pot May Be Legal in Your State—but That Doesn’t Mean You Can Smoke It in Your Home


Pot May Be Legal in Your State—but That Doesn’t Mean You Can Smoke It in Your Home

marijuana smoking at home

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What a buzzkill. Even as more states legalize recreational and medicinal marijuana, pot smokers can’t stop being paranoid. Just because it’s legal to get high in certain cities and states, doesn’t mean renters and homeowners are always permitted to light up in their homes.

More condo and co-op associations and landlords are cracking down on residents who smoke and grow pungent marijuana in their units or in common areas. Even as acceptance of marijuana use grows across the nation, there’s an uptick in neighbors objecting to the odors, according to real estate attorneys and a recent Boston Globe story.

Some fear getting sick from secondhand smoke creeping into their own homes. Some merely object to the idea of it going on around the corner, in the next apartment or in the shared hallway. It’s puff, puff, pass, without the puffing.

These next-door party-poopers are a response to the wave of legalization. Recreational marijuana is currently permitted in nine states and Washington, D.C., while medicinal marijuana is legal in another 21 states. Even President Trump said recently that the administration won’t be going after suppliers and users in states where it’s permitted, according to The Washington Post.

“Your home may or may not be your castle,” says Benny Kass, an attorney specializing in real estate at the Kass Legal Group in Washington, D.C. “The law is very clear that an owner in a homeowner’s association, co-op or condo is bound by the rules and regulations and laws existing at the time of purchase —and as they are properly and legally amended from time to time.”

That means your condo board or landlord are within their rights to ban tenants from getting baked in their buildings, even if the building’s bylaws and documents are changed well after residents have moved in. (They can’t stop them from chowing down on legal THC-laden edibles, however.)

The legal process gets a bit cloudy when condo or co-op boards or landlords discriminate against stoners, says Dan Zimberoff, an attorney at Zimberoff Deutsch, in San Diego, who specializes in homeowners associations. It can also be more complicated if the offending neighbor is packing a bowl for medicinal reasons.

If a board bans all smoking, including tobacco, then it’s harder to prove discrimination if tenants can’t light up a joint. But if a board only prohibits residents from smoking marijuana, then those tenants may have a case in court.

“You wouldn’t have rules prohibiting playing a particular type of music, like rock ’n’ roll. You would have prohibitions around loud sounds,” says Zimberoff, who previously practiced in Washington and Oregon states, where weed is now legal. “[Boards and landlords] certainly can say you cannot utilize a device, whether it’s a nicotine cigarette or marijuana or a vapor device, that’s going to emit a carcinogen … [that could] have an adverse impact on others.”

He recommends that smokers talk to their annoyed neighbors instead. They can try to work out times to toke up when the neighbors are gone or figure out just where in their apartments the smell is less likely to make its odorous presence known in others’ homes.

If that doesn’t work, they can hermetically seal their units and install air cleaners to keep the smoke from spreading into common spaces—or their neighbors’ homes. It isn’t cheap, but it will often do the trick.

“The answer lies in a reasonable compromise,” Zimberoff says. “It’s just being neighborly.”

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