BUFFALO (WBEN) - "I woke up and I was feeling nauseated, disoriented, and I had kind of like a foggy head...and just like secondhand smoke would affect people, this affected me."
Ronald Solomon is a Cheektowaga resident who lives above someone who smokes marijuana frequently, and he's unsure what to do about it, which is why he contacted WBEN last week.
He put in a call to law enforcement, but according to Solomon, they essentially told him there was nothing they could do about his neighbor's frequent smoking and that he should contact his landlord.
"A neighbor who's in close proximity to someone else who doesn't like the smell of the marijuana, there's nothing specifically in the law that allows the police to stop that," said Brian Gould, assistant Cheektowaga Police chief. "Marijuana right now is legal to smoke - it's almost along the same lines as a cigarette, and if we had a neighbor dispute where somebody was upset that cigarette smell was coming through the vents of an apartment building, that wouldn't be something that would be a law enforcement matter."
Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill to legalize adult use of cannabis in New York State in late March, but Solomon feels it's wrong that he be subject to the decisions that his neighbor makes.
"Marijuana is something that I don't want to be a part of, and I have to be a part of it," said Solomon. "I did speak to my landlord and he called the downstairs tenant to tell her to go smoke it out on the back porch or outside but not in the house...I can't say what the future holds in store with her, but I don't want to be exposed to it."
Gould noted they have received a few calls from residents with similar complaints as Solomon, and he said there's currently no mechanism to do anything about it.
"It's so gray at this point that there isn't anything specific that we as police can use to enforce somebody not smoking marijuana inside their house," said Gould. "If we continue to see calls such as the one that you described earlier, in that it's affecting quality of life for neighbors, then maybe at some point we can pass that along to our legislators to consider whether that warrants further change to the laws or not."
