Month: June 2013

A reader quotes the previous one:

I was told that he did not need a warrant because he had “plain smell”.  I told him that I knew that wasn’t true, and that I was not opening the door without a warrant….

As a former apartment dweller, I would just like to attest that the above is nonsense.  If you smoke in your apartment, I can smell it in the hallway.  When you smoke, some of the odors are absorbed into your carpet, your drapes, your cloth furniture, and your clothing.  And it retains the odor long after you’ve put out your doobie.  Also, most apartments have exhaust fans for one apartment relatively close to intakes for other apartments, so probably your neighbors could smell it in their own units while you’re smoking. And don’t they have rights not have their spaces permeated by your illegal behavior?

Furthermore, many people, me included, have jobs where we get tested for drug use.  I don’t know if second-hand marijuana smoke can cause a false positive, but I sure as heck don’t want to be flagged because my neighbor is a pothead and hasn’t figured out that the smoke is airborne. I don’t think its my responsibility to find out.

My husband smokes regularly, and I find that until he has showered and gone for a pretty significant workout after smoking, I can smell it on him. I clearly don’t have a problem with it – hell, I’m married to someone who smokes regularly. But to try and pretend that it doesn’t smell or impact your neighbor? That’s just insulting. In the meantime, until you can get a space of your own, can I suggest you make brownies? Chocolate aroma bothers no one.

For the record, while I’m not fully on board with your reader’s take on being able to smell the smoke in the hall, I am fully on board with the fact that the cop’s apartment search was wildly inappropriate.

Another:

Your post from the reader whose apartment was searched enraged me.

It has taken me more than 30 years to accept that decriminalizing marijuana is necessary even though I don’t have much tolerance for pot smoking, but I saw no reason for the cops to behave the way they did. I kept wondering why someone hadn’t just complained to the tenant about the marijuana, either face-to-face or anonymously. That’s what I would have done.

But the more I thought about it, the more I became concerned that legalizing marijuana is going to lead to a lot more disputes between neighbors in attached housing. Here’s the problem: construction isn’t necessarily good quality and smoke and odors can go from one person’s space to another. Did this tenant’s marijuana smoke seep through the walls to irritate the neighbor’s asthma or waft up near the baby’s crib? Do some neighbor’s rugs smell like pot smoke whenever the tenant relaxes at home? Is the smoke not bothering the neighbor, per se, but is it making someone’s closet smell like pot, and is that person getting harassed with drug tests at work because they are a teacher’s aide or a crime-and-courts reporter or a hospital cafeteria worker and their supervisor can smell pot on their clothing?

There’s a reason why a lot of people dream of owning the detached house in the suburbs. I have one, but I was widowed a couple of years ago before I hit age 60, and I’m not happy that I may have to live in a townhouse or apartment because I can’t afford this house. I do have problems because my neighbor’s wood smoke sometimes comes down my unused fireplace chimney (even with the flue closed) and fills my first floor with smoke that makes my eyes water and my upholstery smell. I worry that if I rent an apartment I will have noisy neighbors, have to deal with cigarette or cigar – or now, marijuana – smoke, other penetrating odors or volatile chemicals from air fresheners or cleaning products, neighbors who are hoarders, neighbors who burn candles and are careless about fire hazards, or neighbors whose pets cause any of a number of problems.

Now I think there needs to be some candid discussion about marijuana smoke. I am glad smoking tobacco is so restricted these days, and I do think any kind of smoking should be confined to places where it won’t bother someone else. That means if an apartment building is nonsmoking, the nonsmoking rule applies to more than tobacco.

What the police did in Alexandria was despicable. The tenant never deserved such treatment. But maybe the tenant was unaware of some unexpected side effects of their behavior, and so what should have been a polite discussion between tenants turned into a confrontation by proxy by involving the police.

Neil deGrasse Tyson guides you through a long and lively introduction to the field:

Psychiatrist Sally Satel and psychology professor Scott Lilienfeld have a new book out, Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, which stresses that there are limits to what brain science can teach us. Neuroskeptic praises the book:

The overselling and misinterpretation of neuroscience is everywhere, because – for some reason – we’ve convinced ourselves that the human brain, which has been working away quite steadily for 50,000 years, has suddenly become more important.

Also praising Brainwashed, David Brooks happily downplays neuroscience:

The brain is not the mind. It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind. … [T]here appears to be no dispersed pattern of activation that we can look at and say, “That person is experiencing hatred.”

Gary Marcus counters Brooks:

It is reasonable to think, based on current research, that no single spot of the brain maps to hatred. But there is no principled reason to think that we will never be able to find some neural pattern, or set of patterns, that correspond to that emotion. …

[T]he idea that the mind is separate from the brain no longer makes sense. They are simply different ways of describing the same thing. To talk about the brain is to talk about physiology, neurons, receptors, and neurotransmitters; to talk about the mind is to talk about thoughts, ideas, beliefs, emotions, and desires. As an old and elegant phrase puts it, “The mind is what the brain does.”

Satel sums up:

The brain creates the mind through the actions of neurons and circuits, yes, but it cannot reveal its nuanced contents. … No matter how intricately scientists understand the brain, they won’t be able to answer why we sabotage ourselves—the question that, in some form or another, has launched a zillion therapy hours. It won’t compel us to adopt a new moral code or revamp our system of criminal justice. … [B]rain-based explanations of our longings, exploits, and foibles are sure to break our hearts.

An excerpt from the book is here.  Previous Dish on the subject here and here.