Smoking ban in Hotels, is this a way around it?

Hardly one of those questions that would have the Country's finest legal brains scratching their heads. Shesells aswered this about 15 posts ago. It's not a legal issue. You are allowed to smoke in hotel bedrooms. The hotel is entitled to designate certain rooms as non-smoking and are entitled to charge you if they find you were smoking in one of those rooms and left a smell. Can't see why your excuse that you were in the room but your cigerette was outside the window would be any sort of defence if the hotel decided to charge you. If I shoot up on heroin while hanging out the window, I can hardly claim I was inside and the drugs were outside...
 
shesells said:
Did you read my post? It's not a legal issue. The law says you can smoke in a hotel room but hotels have the right to have their own policies. This is what you would be breaching and the sanction depends on what you signed at booking/check in.
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It could become a legal issue/I would have thought that it is against the law to smoke in an area designated as non smoking?
 
Wasnt thedaras point not if it were legal or not,but if it could be used as a defence?
 
DonDub said:
It could become a legal issue/I would have thought that it is against the law to smoke in an area designated as non smoking?
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As far as I know, not hotel rooms because they are not public places and do not some under the smoking ban legislation. It's for the hotel to decide and charge you if you smoke in a non-smoking room. Has nothing to do with the Authorities unlike if you were caught smoking in a bar.

BTW, I could be wrong!
 

So back to thedaras post then, if the hotel fined you for smoking in the room,and you claimed you were not, and refused to pay the fine,wouldnt the logical conclusion be that that they would have to bring you to court ?
Therefore it becomes a legal issue.
 
No defence. As others have said with the exemption (of sorts) for Hotels means that they can set their own rules and standards. Second though is the wording of the legislation which is that employers must not expose their employees to Environmental Tobacco Smoke.

On face value this means smoking in these areas is banned, however, it would also mean that if some smoke were to come back into an area and expose employees, the hotel would still have a case.

The physical act of smoking inside or outside the room is irrelevant, it's whether or not the ETS gets into the room that the law hangs on.
 
It is very unlikely that the hotel would go that far, due to time/expense.?

Which is why I'm saying that if someone says I wasn't smoking in the room,would the hotel then not bother to take any action.

How does the hotel in this case determine if there is ETS in the room?
 
It is very unlikely that the hotel would go that far, due to time/expense.?
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But if they had a problem with it, the hotel chain would probably black list you.
 
It is NOT against the law to smoke in Hotel rooms.
It IS against hotel policy to smoke in non smoking rooms.
The hotel IS by law allowed to enforce their policies if broken.

You are breaking a policy that can be enforced by law but you are not breaking an actual law.

IMO unless you have done any damage to the room the hotel will not go to expense to chase you for a fine.
 
MANTO said:
IMO unless you have done any damage to the room the hotel will not go to expense to chase you for a fine.
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That's where the OP isn't actually an issue or defence as such. In the same way a hotel any impose an additional charge for any damage they say you caused to the room, they can do the same for a smell of smoke in a non-smoking room.

As with the damage issue, it's your word against theirs.
 

If you take what thedaras asked originally," If the window is fully open and you light and smoke the ciggerete outside,can you be fined?".

Well it looks like ,thedaras original post didnt ask about if it was legal or not,but if you were caught smoking out a window in a non smoking room,could you be fined.

I dont think it has been answered,regardless of if it being a legal/civil/hotel policy.The question is can you be FINED?

I know from what my aunt says that unless the hotel has direct evidence of smoking in a room,then nothing can be done.

It is a very interesting/worrying question,espically for hotel /B and Bs etc.
 
thedaras said:
My point is ,could the same happen in the case of a hotel room where someone claims they were not smoking in the room, but in fact out of the window,they may have been in the room but the cigerette wasnt.
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If you want to play the silly technicalities game, then ask this - was any part of the person inside the room while they were smoking?
 

The question wasn't clear to answer. Fined by who: The enforcing authority? No, because hotels are different and the rooms are not under the control of the enforcing authority. Fined by the hotel? Depends. They aren't at liberty to impose a "fine" as such, because that would be a criminal sanction, but can impose an "additional charge".

As such the same standards will apply to whether you take a dressing gown, break a lamp or spill wine on the carpet.
 
What does it matter who issues the fine.
The question is would they be fined?
Not who will fine them.
 
Complainer said:
If you want to play the silly technicalities game, then ask this - was any part of the person inside the room while they were smoking?
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In the case of my aunts place, no part of the person was inside the room.

They were sitting on the window sill.

Do you mean as they had no body part "in" the room,that technically they were not "in" the room and therefore couldn't be fined for smoking in the room?

You see if you were in a ground floor room,and the smoking area was too far to be bothered going too,then you could open the window and hop out?

Or sit on the sill.

Then you wouldn't technically be in the room, and couldn't be fined .

Because if you were outside a pub ( in a designated smoking area )and the windows were open,they couldn't fine you if some smoke got in.

What do you guys and gals think,is this the answer?

For the smokers it could be.
For the hotel/B and Bs, it may be a bit of a quagmire.

42.
 

As stated, the legislation isn't concerned with physical or metaphysical debates about being inside or outside a room. It's exposing employees to ETS.

The two examples you provide are different. With the pub, it has set up a smoking area adjacent to a window and so allowing ETS to enter the premises. That is the fault of the publican and they may be subject to enforcement regarding this if ETS is re-entering the building. Guidance to the legisation gives a recommendation of 6 metres away from any open window or vent.

The only possible defence is if there is no private land to designate a smoking area and people are smoking on the street. As the publican has no control over that, they can't be liable.

In the case of the hotel/BB if people are not using a designated smoking area and are either sitting on the window sill or standing under a window on the grounds of the Hotel, then the owner is entitled to enforce that. They have a designated smoking area and that is where smoking is permitted. It's their land, they are entitled to state where people can smoke. It's their right to implement any form of enforcement of that rule on their land, window sill or not.

It isn't grey at all. If a room was cleaned on the Monday and it wasn't smelling of smoke, a person checks in, leaves on Tuesday and the room smells of smoke Hotels can, and do impose an additional fee. It isn't a fine in the same way they don't fine you for breaking a glass or spilling wine. You can't directly prove I broke the glass or spilled the wine, but you can narrow it down to having occurred when I was in charge of that room.

The only time it is grey is like with the pub example where the person is smoking in a public area, such as a footpath. If the hotel control the grounds they can designate and enforce specified smoking areas.

That's why the first post was a silly one, it was trying to be clever with a bit of law that doesn't actually exist. The law is not to expose employees to ETS, the consequence of that is you can't smoke in a workplace, but that additional steps need to be taken to prevent ETS getting into the workplace.
 
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