Most of the advice you'll find on this says the same two things: cite the lease, then evict. Both are incomplete. Maine has a smoking statute on the books that sounds like it protects you and mostly doesn't, a notice structure that punishes landlords who pick the wrong track, and a medical cannabis provision that quietly rewrites your no-smoking clause if you drafted it lazily. Here's how the enforcement actually works, in the order you'll face it.
This post is educational, not legal advice. Maine landlord-tenant law is particular, and the facts of your situation matter. For advice on a specific property or tenant situation, talk to a Maine-licensed attorney or contact Pine Tree Legal Assistance at ptla.org.
Is a no-smoking clause actually enforceable in Maine?
Yes. A no-smoking clause is a lease term like any other, and Maine courts enforce it the same way they enforce a pet clause or an occupancy limit. What surprises most owners is that the enforcement power comes from your lease, not from Maine's smoking disclosure statute.
That distinction decides how you write your lease. Maine has no statute that bans smoking inside a private apartment. The Workplace Smoking Act at 22 MRSA §1580-A defines a business facility to exclude a personal residence except while an employee is on site working, and the public-places smoking ban at 22 MRSA §1542 carves out private residences unless the residence operates as a day care or babysitting service.
So if a tenant lights a cigarette in a unit where you never wrote a no-smoking clause, they have broken no law and no lease term. You have no case. The clause is the whole ballgame, and everything below assumes you have one in writing.
What does 14 MRSA §6030-E require you to disclose?
Before a tenant signs or pays a deposit, you must give written notice stating whether smoking is prohibited on the premises, allowed everywhere, or allowed in limited areas. If limited, name the areas. You also have to collect a written acknowledgment from the tenant. That signed acknowledgment is your best evidence later.
The statute is 14 MRSA §6030-E, added by Public Law 2011, chapter 199, out of LD 1067 in the 125th Legislature. It applies to leases and tenancy-at-will agreements for a primary residence. It defines smoking as carrying or possessing a lighted cigarette, cigar, pipe, or other object giving off tobacco smoke.
You have two delivery options. Put the disclosure in the written lease, or deliver it as a separate written notice, which is the route most owners use for a tenancy at will. Either way, subsection 3(C) requires you to obtain the written acknowledgment before the tenant enters the contract or pays a deposit. Not after. Not at move-in.
The part of §6030-E nobody tells you
It has no penalty. The bill as introduced carried a $250 civil violation for landlords who skipped the disclosure, and the enacted amendment stripped it out. Subsection 4 goes further: a tenant may not bring a private cause of action against you solely because you failed to provide the smoking policy disclosure, and a tenant may not sue you using another tenant's violation of a smoking policy as the basis.
Read that second clause twice, because it cuts in your favor. When the tenant in 2B complains that the tenant in 2A is smoking, §6030-E is not the hook they can hang a claim on. Their claim, if they have one, lives in the habitability statute instead, which I get to below.
None of that makes the disclosure optional. Skip it and you have handed a tenant's attorney an easy argument that the no-smoking policy was never properly part of the tenancy at all. In every FED I've been involved with at BHR where smoking was the ground, the signed §6030-E acknowledgment did more work in front of the judge than the lease clause itself.
Can you evict a tenant for smoking in a no-smoking unit?
Yes, but the notice you use depends on the facts. Smoking that causes substantial damage, creates a nuisance, or makes the unit unfit for habitation supports a 7-day notice to quit under 14 MRSA §6002(1). Ordinary clause-breaking without those aggravators runs on your lease's own violation terms.
The statute is 14 MRSA §6002. Subsection 1 lets you terminate on 7 days' written notice where you show by affirmative proof that the tenant, the tenant's family, or an invitee caused substantial damage the tenant hasn't repaired, caused or permitted a nuisance, caused the unit to become unfit for human habitation, or violated the law regarding the tenancy. Subsection 2 requires the notice to state which ground you're using.
"Affirmative proof" is the phrase that decides your case. A single complaint from a neighbor is not affirmative proof of a nuisance. A photographed burn hole in the sill, a maintenance log with three dated entries, and two neighbors willing to appear are.
| Situation | Notice track | What you must prove | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smoke damage to walls, carpet, fixtures; burn marks; disabled smoke detector | 7-day notice to quit | Substantial damage, unrepaired by tenant, by affirmative proof | 14 MRSA §6002(1)(A) |
| Repeated smoke infiltration into other units; smoking in posted common areas; documented neighbor complaints | 7-day notice to quit | Nuisance, or unit rendered unfit for habitation, by affirmative proof | 14 MRSA §6002(1)(B) |
| Tenant smokes in the unit, no damage yet, no neighbor impact | Your lease's violation and cure terms | The clause, the signed §6030-E acknowledgment, and the violation | Lease contract |
| Tenancy at will, no aggravating facts, you simply want them out | Minimum 30-day notice, no cause stated | Nothing about the smoking; the notice must carry the statutory contest-rights language | 14 MRSA §6002 |
My opinion, and it costs some landlords money to disagree with it: do not reach for the 7-day notice on a first smoking violation. Judges see a lot of landlords stretching "nuisance" to cover an inconvenience, and losing an FED on a defective notice hands the tenant momentum and puts you back at day zero. Send the cure letter, document the second violation, then go.
One thing that works in your favor here. Under 14 MRSA §6001(3), the six-month presumption of retaliation does not apply where the FED is brought for a reason set out in §6002(1) or for violation of a lease provision, unless the tenant has asserted a right under §6026. A genuine smoking eviction is not a retaliation case, even if the tenant complained about something last month.
What does the eviction actually look like in Penobscot County?
Notice to quit, then a Forcible Entry and Detainer complaint filed in the District Court where the property sits. For Bangor properties that is the Penobscot Judicial Center. If you win, the court issues the writ of possession seven days after judgment, and the tenant gets 48 hours after service.
The Maine Judicial Branch publishes the forms and the current fee schedule on its eviction pages, and Rule 80D of the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure governs the process. Two documents trip people up. The FED summons, form CV-034, has to be obtained from the clerk's office rather than downloaded, and the complaint must be accompanied by the Residential FED Information Sheet and Mediation Request, form CV-256. Mediation is available under §6004-A and, in a smoking case, is often where the matter actually resolves.
- Serve the notice to quit and keep proof of service. In-hand is cleanest. If you make three good-faith attempts on three different days, you can mail first class and leave a copy at the unit.
- Wait out the notice period in full. Filing a day early is the most common self-inflicted dismissal.
- File the FED complaint with the summons and CV-256 at the Penobscot Judicial Center for a Bangor-area property, or the District Court covering the town where the unit sits.
- Bring your evidence to the hearing: the lease, the signed §6030-E acknowledgment, dated photographs, maintenance records, written complaints, and any witnesses.
- If you win, 14 MRSA §6005 has the court issue the writ of possession seven calendar days after judgment. A sheriff or constable serves it, and the tenant has 48 hours to move out.
Appeal timing matters for your turnover planning. Under 14 MRSA §6008, the time to appeal expires when the writ issues under §6005 or 30 days after judgment, whichever comes first. In practice that gives a tenant a seven-day window. Do not schedule your painter for day eight.
If you want the mechanics of the notice itself in more detail, I wrote a separate walkthrough on the Maine 7-day notice to quit.
What can you never do, no matter how bad the smoking gets?
You cannot change the locks, shut off utilities, or move a tenant's belongings out. Maine calls those illegal evictions under 14 MRSA §6014, and they expose you to the greater of actual damages or $250, plus the tenant's court costs and attorney's fees. Use the court process.
Section 6014 states that evictions carried out without resort to the chapter are illegal and against public policy. The listed conduct includes willfully interrupting utilities, denying the tenant access to the unit, and denying access to the tenant's property. The tenant recovers actual damages or $250, whichever is greater, plus costs and reasonable attorney's fees.
The $250 floor is not what should worry you. The attorney's fees are. A smoking case where you lost patience and pulled the lock is a case a tenant's lawyer will take on fee-shifting alone. I've written more on where owners cross that line in illegal eviction in Maine.
Does a medical marijuana card change the analysis?
It narrows what you can prohibit. Under 22 MRSA §2430-C, you may ban smoking of medical cannabis only if you ban all smoking on the premises and post notice. You cannot forbid cannabis smoke while permitting tobacco smoke, and you cannot refuse to rent based on cardholder status alone.
The operative section is 22 MRSA §2430-C. Note the section number, because plenty of Maine landlord material still cites §2423-E, which has been repealed. Subsection 2 conditions your right to prohibit medical cannabis smoking on two things: you prohibit all smoking on the premises, and you post notice to that effect on the premises. Both, not either.
The same subsection bars you from refusing to lease to someone, or otherwise penalizing them, solely because they are a qualifying patient or caregiver, unless doing otherwise would violate federal law or cost you a federal contract or funding. It also preserves your ability to restrict cultivation where that use is inconsistent with the general use of the premises.
Two practical consequences. First, a partial smoking ban is worse than useless against a cardholder, so if you are going smoke-free, go fully smoke-free building-wide and post the notice. Second, a smoking ban reaches smoke, not cannabis. Edibles and tinctures are protected patient conduct your clause does not touch, and trying to bar those is where an owner picks up a fair housing problem.
Adult-use cannabis is simpler. 28-B MRSA §1501 permits personal use on private property and expressly preserves a property owner's ability to prohibit cannabis use and possession on the premises. And in any federally assisted tenancy, marijuana remains prohibited in every form regardless of what Maine law says, because it is still a controlled substance under federal law.
Can you charge smoke damage against the security deposit?
Yes, for remediation that goes beyond reasonable wear and tear. Sealing nicotine-stained walls, replacing saturated carpet and pad, and ozone treatment are chargeable if you document them. You have 30 days on a written lease and 21 days on a tenancy at will to send an itemized written statement.
The return rules are in 14 MRSA §6033, which sets those deadlines and requires a written itemized statement of the reasons for any retention. The same section bars you from retaining a deposit for normal wear and tear. The deposit cap is two months' rent under 14 MRSA §6032.
Get this wrong and it is expensive. 14 MRSA §6034(2) makes wrongful retention worth double the amount wrongfully withheld, plus reasonable attorney's fees and court costs. The Law Court applied that doubling in Robbins v. Foley, 469 A.2d 840 (Me. 1983). The tenant has to give you seven days' notice of intent to sue first, and failing to return within that window creates a presumption that the retention was wrongful.
| Turnover item | Typically chargeable | What makes it stick |
|---|---|---|
| Stain-blocking primer and repaint over nicotine staining | Yes, where staining exceeds ordinary discoloration for the tenancy length | Before photos, painter's invoice specifying the stain-blocking product and the reason for it |
| Carpet and pad replacement | Yes, where odor is saturated into the pad | Installer's written note on odor penetration, plus age-of-carpet records so you are not billing for a carpet already at end of life |
| Ozone or hydroxyl odor treatment | Yes | Vendor invoice with the unit and dates |
| Burn holes in counters, sills, flooring, tub | Yes | Dated photographs and the move-in condition form |
| Light odor with no staining after a long tenancy | Risky | Usually reads as wear and tear; charging it is how landlords end up on the wrong end of §6034 |
Skip the flat nonrefundable "smoking fee." Maine has tightened fee regulation substantially in recent sessions, including new mandatory-recurring-fee and total-price disclosure requirements, and a flat fee untethered to actual cost invites recharacterization. Charge documented remediation against the deposit instead. That's a better record in front of a judge anyway.
What do you owe the neighbor who complains about drifting smoke?
A response, and a record of it. Maine's implied warranty of habitability at 14 MRSA §6021 covers conditions that materially impair health or safety, and a neighbor's claim would ride on that section. Section 6030-E specifically bars a tenant from suing you over another tenant's smoking violation.
Under 14 MRSA §6021, the warranty is non-waivable, and a tenant can seek rent abatement, repair-and-deduct, or injunctive relief where a condition endangers or materially impairs health or safety, the tenant didn't cause it, and the landlord had notice and unreasonably failed to act. The Legislature amended this section as recently as January 2026 to add mold, so it is a live section worth rechecking.
I found no Maine Law Court or Superior Court decision holding that secondhand smoke drifting between units breaches habitability or quiet enjoyment. Courts in other states have entertained the theory, generally through constructive eviction, but that authority is persuasive only and not binding here.
The exposure that is real is the disability one. A neighbor with asthma or COPD can request a reasonable accommodation under the federal Fair Housing Act and the Maine Human Rights Act, and a request to enforce your own smoke-free policy or to transfer them to another unit is not a frivolous ask. Treat that letter as a fair housing matter and call counsel, not as another noise complaint. Worth knowing in the other direction: a smoker's nicotine addiction is not a protected disability, and no fair housing law protects smoking as conduct.
Can you add a no-smoking policy in the middle of a tenancy?
Not unilaterally to a fixed-term written lease. You need the tenant's agreement, which in practice means waiting for renewal. For a tenancy at will you can change terms with proper written notice, and inside Bangor you should plan on 60 days if any rent or fee change travels with it.
The Bangor Tenants' Housing Rights Ordinance, Chapter 282 of the city code, took effect March 9, 2023. It requires 60 days' written notice of a rent increase, which is longer than the statewide floor in 14 MRSA §6015, bans application fees outright, caps screening fees at the actual cost or $75 whichever is less, and requires a rights-and-responsibilities disclosure at lease commencement. It does not address smoking, so your no-smoking policy in Bangor is governed by state law plus your lease.
My rule at BHR is to convert at renewal and never mid-term. You send the renewal offer with the no-smoking clause and the §6030-E disclosure together, the tenant signs both or doesn't renew, and there is no argument later about whether the policy was properly imposed. Grandfathering an existing smoker for one more term is sometimes the right business call. Doing it without putting the end date in writing never is.
Is a smoke-free portfolio worth the trouble?
On the numbers, yes. Smoking materials cause a small share of home fires but the largest share of home fire deaths, turnover on a smoking unit costs materially more, and central Maine has a higher smoking rate than the state average. The rule also gets easier to enforce as it becomes standard.
Start with turnover cost. The figure used in the CDC-published cost analysis of smoke-free public housing puts excess renovation cost at $820 per unit, an estimate the researchers obtained from the Smoke-Free Housing Coalition of Maine, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. That's a Maine-sourced number in a peer-reviewed national study, which is unusual and worth using.
Then fire. Per the National Fire Protection Association, smoking materials caused roughly 5% of home fires from 2016 to 2020 but 24% of home fire deaths, the largest share of any cause. The Maine State Fire Marshal's Office documents smoking-material fatal fires in its annual operations report, including incidents involving home oxygen.
Then local prevalence. Maine's adult cigarette smoking rate runs above the national rate, and Penobscot County runs above Maine's. The Maine Shared Community Health Needs Assessment for Penobscot County reported 24.6% of county adults currently smoking against 19.8% statewide, though those are 2016 figures and both numbers have fallen since. Central and eastern Maine landlords are screening from a pool where smoking is more common than the state or national picture suggests, which is exactly why the disclosure and the clause matter more here than they would in Portland.
Sarah Mayberry, program coordinator for the Smoke-Free Housing Coalition of Maine, told the Bangor Daily News in October 2014 that units where smoking is allowed cost five to 10 times more to turn over. In the same reporting, CDC epidemiologist Brian King, lead author of the cost study, said there is "no safe level of secondhand smoke exposure."
One clarification for owners renting to voucher holders, because I get this question constantly. HUD's smoke-free rule at 24 CFR §965.653, in force since July 30, 2018, covers public housing only. It does not reach a Housing Choice Voucher tenant in your privately owned building. If you want that unit smoke-free, it comes from your lease, same as every other unit.
What I actually do when a smoking report comes in
Document first, notice second. A report from a neighbor starts a file, not a notice to quit. I want dated entries, a unit inspection with photographs, and a written cure letter in the file before anything goes to court, because the affirmative proof standard in §6002(1) is where these cases are won or lost.
The sequence I run at BHR:
- Log the complaint the day it comes in, with the reporting tenant's name, unit, date, and words. A verbal report you didn't write down does not exist by the time you're in front of a judge.
- Inspect with proper notice, photograph everything, and check the smoke detector. A disabled detector converts a nuisance argument into a substantial damage and safety argument.
- Send a written cure letter that quotes the lease clause and attaches the signed §6030-E acknowledgment. Most tenancies end here.
- On a second documented violation, decide the notice track deliberately using the table above, and serve it correctly.
- If it goes to hearing, bring the neighbors. Written complaints without a live witness are the weakest evidence in the file.
We manage hundreds of units across central and eastern Maine, and the smoking cases that go badly are almost always the ones where the owner tried to skip from complaint to eviction in a week.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a landlord in Maine ban smoking in an apartment?
Yes. No Maine statute prohibits smoking inside a private residence, so the ban has to come from your lease. Once it's a lease term, it's enforceable like any other. You also have to deliver the written smoking policy disclosure required by 14 MRSA §6030-E and obtain the tenant's written acknowledgment before they sign or pay a deposit.
How much notice do I have to give a tenant for smoking in a no-smoking unit?
It depends on the facts. Smoking that causes substantial damage, a nuisance, or unfitness for habitation supports a 7-day notice to quit under 14 MRSA §6002(1), but you need affirmative proof. A plain clause violation with no aggravating facts runs on your lease's cure terms, and a no-cause termination of a tenancy at will needs at least 30 days.
Can I charge a tenant for smoke damage in Maine?
Yes, for damage beyond reasonable wear and tear, charged against the security deposit with an itemized written statement. You have 30 days on a written lease and 21 days on a tenancy at will under 14 MRSA §6033. Wrongful retention costs you double the amount withheld plus attorney's fees under §6034, so document with photographs and vendor invoices.
Can a landlord evict a medical marijuana patient for smoking in Maine?
Only if you prohibit all smoking on the premises and post notice, per 22 MRSA §2430-C. A policy that bans cannabis smoke while allowing tobacco smoke does not meet the statute. You also cannot refuse to rent to or penalize someone solely for being a qualifying patient or caregiver, and non-smoked forms like edibles fall outside a smoking ban entirely.
What can I do if a tenant's smoke is bothering neighbors?
Document each complaint in writing, inspect, and act on your lease. A neighbor cannot sue you under §6030-E over another tenant's smoking, but the habitability warranty at 14 MRSA §6021 is available to them, and a neighbor with a respiratory disability may request a reasonable accommodation under fair housing law. Treat that request as a legal matter, not a maintenance ticket.
Do I have to give a smoking disclosure to an existing tenant?
The §6030-E obligation attaches before a tenant enters a contract or pays a deposit, so it runs at lease signing and at renewal rather than mid-term. If you're adding a no-smoking policy to an existing tenancy, deliver the disclosure and get the acknowledgment as part of the renewal package. You cannot impose a new clause mid-term on a fixed-term lease without agreement.
How Bangor Home Rentals handles smoking policies for the owners we manage
If you own rentals in Bangor or central Maine and want a manager who runs smoke-free enforcement properly, from the §6030-E disclosure at signing through documentation, notice, and turnover remediation, consider us at Bangor Home Rentals. We're a second generation family business managing units across Bangor, Brewer, Orono, Old Town, Ellsworth, and more, and you can see our full service area and owner services. We'd love to earn your business. You can call us any time at (207) 262-0199 or click here to schedule a free property management consultation.