Have you ever been relaxing at home, maybe enjoying a nice cup of kopi, when suddenly you catch a whiff of cigarette smoke?
And no, it’s not because you’ve suddenly developed the superpower to smell through walls.
It’s your neighbor’s smoke drifting into your home.
Again.
This smoky situation is more common than you might think, and it’s as complicated as trying to understand why your cat suddenly decides the expensive bed you bought is less comfortable than the cardboard box it came in.
So, is it legal in the first place?
If you prefer to, you can watch a video we’ve done for this topic instead:
The Legal Question: Can I smoke at my HDB window?
First things first: smoking at home isn’t illegal.
Yep, you read that right. Your neighbor puffing away in their living room? Totally legal.
If he’s doing it near the window, that’s totally legal, too.
But here’s where it gets tricky – step outside onto the HDB corridor for a quick drag, and suddenly they’re on the wrong side of the law. It’s like a game of “The Floor is Lava,” except it’s “The Corridor is Illegal.”
The key here is location, location, location.
Inside the house? Legal.
Outside in common areas? Illegal.
The Second-Hand Smokescreen
Now, you might be wondering, “If it’s legal, why are so many people complaining?”
Well, grab a seat, because this is where things get serious.
In 2016 alone, 383 deaths were linked to second-hand smoke in Singapore. That’s not a typo – we’re talking about one person dying every day because of someone else’s smoking habit.
Given how serious this is, you’d think there’d be a law against it by now. Well, it’s not for lack of trying. The debate has been raging, but it’s mostly focused on smoking near windows and balconies.
In fact, a group of MPs suggested banning people from smoking near windows or balconies in HDB flats and private apartments.
But Why No Ban?
Now, before you start planning a TikTok video like a social justice warrior, let’s look at why this ban hasn’t happened yet.
Firstly, you should know by now that the government is already pretty serious about adding non-smoking areas. Remember when you could smoke in KTV rooms? Now, you can’t even light up in Orchard Road. It’s like every few years, smokers find themselves being regulated to a smaller “yellow box”.
The NEA has been focusing on catching people smoking in corridors, staircases, and void decks. They’ve even got thermal cameras for this – it’s like they’re hunting smoke-breathing dragons or something.
But when it comes to smoking inside homes, things get trickier than trying to eat laksa with chopsticks.
Enforcing such a ban would be “highly intrusive.”
Think about it – how would they get evidence? Cameras pointing at people’s windows?
That’s a privacy issue bigger than your aunt’s collection of embarrassing childhood photos. Yes, not her childhood photos but your childhood photos.
And that brings us to the big P-word: Privacy.
Telling people what they can or can’t do in their own homes is like opening a can of worms, except the worms are angry and have lawyers (or a TikTok account with tens of thousands of followers).
A condo once tried to stop people from smoking at windows and balconies, and some residents weren’t too happy about being told what to do in their own homes.
If this had happened in the age of TikTok, you can bet it would have gone viral faster than a video of a chonky blue cat playing piano.
If you’ve got a neighbor who smokes like they’re auditioning for a chimney role in a play, don’t despair. There is something you can do, but fair warning: it’s not as quick as cooking your Maggi Mee
The process is similar to how you’d handle other neighbourly disputes, like that time your neighbor decided 3 AM was the perfect time to start their heavy metal band practice.
You can read this on how to settle neighbourly disputes (it’s the same for both HDB and condos), although the very first advice I’d have for you is this:
Do you even know the name of your neighbour?