St. Petersburg advised to “smoke” neighbors

The law allows you to smoke at home, but if smoke and smell enter the neighbors and interfere with their lives, the situation can be resolved through the courts. How to act if it is impossible to breathe in your own apartment, in a conversation with 360.ru told the lawyer Natalia Kubasova from the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.

The first step is to talk to your neighbor and explain the problem. If the door does not open, you can send him a written claim, and then file a complaint with the management company.

If this does not help, the next step will be written statements to Rospotrebnadzor and the local precinct. After that, you can safely file a lawsuit with a demand to ban smoking and recover compensation. It is not necessary to wait for an official response from the regulatory authorities before filing a lawsuit.

According to the expert, the main difficulty is to prove yourself right, because there are no sanitary standards for the level of smell, and the court will not have enough just words about what “smells”. Evidence will be required: acts from the management company with witnesses, testimony from other residents, videos, and a diary with dates and times. In addition, medical documents on poor health and answers from government agencies will be useful. This database is used to prove the regularity of the problem and the fault of a particular neighbor.

And while some are trying to solve the problem of smoke through the court, the city authorities of St. Petersburg took up it globally. The working group of the Legislative Assembly of the Northern capital unanimously supported a complete ban on the sale of vapes. The bill could be submitted for consideration as early as next week.

The editorial board of "MK in St. Petersburg" warns that smoking is harmful to your health.