My parents always used to sit in the smoking sections.
And they always smoked a few cigarettes during the meal.
I was so happy when they finally banned the cigarettes in restaurants. My parents were pissed.
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My parents always used to sit in the smoking sections.
And they always smoked a few cigarettes during the meal.
I was so happy when they finally banned the cigarettes in restaurants. My parents were pissed.
The crazy thing about this is that I did too. Then I was old enough to go to restaurants on my own. I also smoked, but you know what I did? I fucking went outside like a godamn person. I don't smoke anymore but the idea of subjecting everyone else to my bullshit isn't okay.
As a non-smoker (cigarettes) who grew up as smoking was pushed outdoors, the one thing I feel like I truly missed out on is the social aspect of it. If you walk out front with a cigarette and/or a lighter, you've already got a conversation starter with literally anyone else standing outside (and then by extension, anyone else that they might be there with).
Just a massive tool for meeting people that I feel like I missed out on completely. Not sure if it's enough to regret not smoking, but still...
As a smoker, I have had so many amazing conversations with fellow smokers. Back when they used to have those outdoor boxes outside of hospitals, I’d always meet someone interesting in there when I had a reason to be at a hospital.
I met an old dude one time that was nearly blown in half in Vietnam. He was so cheerful and joked about it, which blew my mind. We talked for three days. I was there with my ex for her uncle and he was there for his wife. He said, “It hurts getting blowed up, but not as bad as someone randomly puttin’ uh fanger up ya butt when you’re froggin’.” Then he looked around and said, “Lord, I better watch my mouth. My wife’s sister would drop dead if she knew her sister put her fangers in my butt and made her food with those hands. She’s one uh them Bible thumpers that would sleep on a pew if she thought it would make her look pious. She’d never leave the church. She’s on her way to hell like the rest of us but, bless her heart, she don’t even know it.”
Crude, I know, but he had me dying laughing. Had this real thick accent that made everything sound funny. He was also very insightful and intelligent. When it was just me and him out there he was so crude. The second someone else would show up he’d drop it. It’s crazy how you can make a connection with someone in such a short time and get to know their “at home” self.
Nowadays the smokers are all hiding behind a bush somewhere far away from each other.
I’m standing outside freezing right now for a cigarette because I don’t smoke in my home. I did when I was younger and it just ruined everything. It’s nice to repair something and it isn’t sticky inside when I open it up these days.
I gotta quit this crap. I really do.
You can do it, the first step to quitting is wanting to.
As a non cigarette smoker who has tried them once or twice, the thought of taking a drag of a cigarette during a meal makes me want to vomit. It has to completely ruin the taste of whatever you are eating.
Afterwards, I understand. Maybe before if you're trying to reduce your appetite or some shit. But during? That seems insane to me.
It has to completely ruin the taste of whatever you are eating
Smoking really destroys your tastebuds so it's not like smoking while eating makes a huge difference anyway.
Reminder to anyone who still smokes: you smell like shit 100% to anyone you interact with.
And any place you still smoke in, whether your car or home, also smells like shit.
And to delivery drivers who smoke, the packages you deliver smell like shit, too!
Positive reinforcement works better for helping people quit :(
Especially when quitting smoking tanks a person's dopamine levels. It takes weeks for the body to re-regulate production.
To anyone reading this who has quit/is quitting: congratulations! It's tough, you have shown a force of willpower and should be proud of yourself.
Love, a fellow Canadian.
Edit:
As with other forms of punishment, aversive methods are generally less effective than positive approaches. It is more important to reward and praise desirable behaviors than to react negatively to unwanted ones. Encouraging a person’s ability to enjoy self-affirmation and self-pride will help them internalize healthy attributes and to become a person deserving of admiration...Shame doesn’t motivate prosocial behaviors; it fuels social withdrawal and low self-esteem.
Source: took some psych courses
&
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/201705/why-shaming-doesnt-work
It's so nasty when you get delivery and the food reeks of cigarettes.
One time it smelled of coppertone sunscreen which was wild and also off putting but in very different ways.
I got a coffee from Dunkin Donuts once that had been prepared by someone who had some kind of topical menthol cream all over their hands. That was the second most disgusting thing I've put in my mouth.
I was born with a deviated septum, so I can't smell much of anything, but cigarette is one thing I can smell... And I can confirm everything in your post.
My dad used to smoke. A lot. I once had to borrow his car for a week or so and couldn't even drive it without flooding it with febreze and opening all the windows.
I used to have a co-worker who smoked so much that I (and others with more sensitive schnozzes) could tell if he'd been in a room in the past hour or more.
Even if you don't care about your own health, you shouldn't smoke for the sake of those around you.
Between the massive corporate wealth at stake and the millions of people literally addicted to the product, it's hard now to imagine governments being able to ban them (and I lived through it).
And now we have vaping.
😭
Infinitely better for health and can only be used in private spaces or outside in most countries, would rather have some rights than none
Which the Aussie government banned, yet didn’t even touch cigarettes.
Didn't ban them, just restricted who could sell them.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-24/vaping-ban-watered-down-greens-support/104016012
For people too young to remember, a lot of people were against smoking bans. The argument was pretty simple: "Why not let the market decide? If you want to go to a bar with no smokers, go to one that doesn't allow smoking." This was persuasive to a lot of people.
But I recall that non-smoking bars were extremely rare and I would always end up smelling like smoke every time I went to the bar. The problem was basically that going to a non-smoking bar would exclude any friends that smoked, so bars that became non-smoking were limiting themselves to only those patrons who didn't smoke themselves and had no one in their group who did.
In hindsight, it betrays a fundamental problem with the "let the market decide" argument: there are situations where a small number of consumers with uncommon preferences can end up altering the whole market such that the majority of consumers are forced into un-ideal purchases. In the case of smoking at bars, it was actually better to say "Hey you few people who smoke, you're kinda fucking up everything and we do actually need big government to step in and stop you from doing that."
In the UK, most places had a non-smoking section (even restaurants 🤮) which was just part of the same room. No barriers or anything. The whole place stank no matter where you sat
Same in the US. And it wasn't hard to get seated at a non-smoking table right next to the smoking section since there was no space between the tables or anything.
Airplanes were even worse.
And airplanes. People used to smoke in airplanes.
Also it was a freaking huge industry to kill all the whales in the sea.
Once upon a time it was common to mine ice.
The world can be changed.
as a young person who hates cigarettes and recently went to las vegas for the first time, it was wild walking around the casinos thinking "this is what everywhere used to smell like, its incredibly disgusting!" I'm glad we managed to stop smoking indoors, probably one of the greatest advances of society.
Ah yes, the smoking section, and the second-hand-smoking section in restaurants
Yeah, I remember the tail end of this. Dedicated smoking rooms, or smoking carriages on trains. Or cafés and restaurants that would promote themselves as places where you could freely smoke.
Thankfully that's all gone now.
If you as much as had a coffee out you used to have to immediately wash everything you were wearing down to your socks. Turns out, jeans don't automatically stink if you cross your front door with them. Who knew.
It's been a while, but that tobacco smell on clothes was so weird. It smelled sweaty even if it wasn't, like you had been jogging through a house fire. So gross.
Tbf, that was not only smoke from cigarettes. Combustion engines and furnaces used to add a lot of smoke, too, before the use of catalysators and filters became compulsory.
Yep, pop down to a classic car show and stand behind a running MK1 Escort
That's what the rest of the world smelled like
Just want to add that the biggest objection that I have heard from coworkers and friends about making recreational Marijuanna legal is the smell. Walk around a downtown in any state it is legal for recreation in and the smell is everywhere.
Non-users don’t want to smell burning weed or tabacco as they go about their day.
I'm with you, Marijuana smells just a awful to me (a non-smoker)
Much worse than the smell of cigarettes, imo
Yeah. I guess I don't really gaf that my neighbor smokes weed however I do hate that as a person who doesn't smoke weed I can't go into my garage or anywhere in my back yard without feeling smelling hardcore weed smell and my garage just accumulates it.
"This is a non-smoking flight." Yeah, fucking who doesn't know that? It's like saying this is non-highjacking flight.
You'd be surprised. Cuba's state airline only banned smoking in the 2010s, and Chinese pilots were allowed to smoke in the cockpit until the 2000s at least even though it was banned for passengers in the 1990s.
Also, I guarantee you (considering people try to light up in the bathroom anyway) that if they didn't say that, people would try to smoke on planes more often.
Yeah it did, but back in those days, student loans were federally regulated, the minimum wage was set to an appropriate number, it was possible to buy a house while only working one job.
Uh, no? The first state to actually ban smoking was in 2002, minimum wage was already too low to get by and literally not a single person I know was able to buy a house on a single income. I graduated college then and it was a massive recession still happening from the dot com crash. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Nickle and Dimed about how it is impossible to get by on a minimum wage in 2001 and was already calling for a 15 dollar minimum wage. The US made no progress.
I lived in hungary for a pretty long time and there everything still smells like cigarettes... moved to sweden the air is literally fresher and the grass is literally greener
I remember growing up in Ohio when we banned smoking, there were commercials CONSTANTLY about it.
Smoke FREE Ohio vs smoke LESS Ohio.
And even in school I could tell that smoke LESS Ohio was going to force places that didn't have smoking, to allow smoking in certain areas.
And the guy in the commercial for it acted incredulous that they would ban smoking in bars! The horror! A place where people are densely packed clearly should be filled with cancerous death fog, slowly killing people who want to be at the bar but not partake in death sticks.
I was super happy when the ban happened. I hated going to nearby states without the smoking ban.
It took years for golden corral to stop smelling like shit.
Negative health effects aside, I do kinda miss the smell of certain places - the smoking tables of a restaurant, an 80's arcade, the back bar of a country pub... not in a way that I liked the smell at all, but that's what it always was, and taking an element away from it leaves a noticeable gap.
I suppose people of a later generation will never remember the difference, much like I never really knew anything but colour TV.
That said, I absolutely 100% do not miss going out on the piss, getting home somehow, and waking up in my clothes that absolutely reeked of smoke. It was horrific. A quick wash never seemed to clear it fully either - it was either a wash that lasted so long that it looked like you bought your clothes from the children's aisle, or a whole day line drying to get rid of that stale smoke smell.
I'm glad the world is moving on.
A couple years ago I was in I-Hop with the fam and this young woman came in reeking like a walking ashtray. It brought back a semi-nostalgic memory of people I used to know who smoked so much it was in their clothes, their hair, their furniture, etc. - it was part of them. I never minded the smoke itself, it was that rancid cigarette butt stench that I always hated.
I still find it funny that we used to just have smoking and non-smoking sections, as if the smoke would stay entirely on the smoking side of the restaurant when they're not even physically seperated.
That shit sucked. I am a smoker myself and even I hate being in a closed room to smoke or be around others who are smoking. Casinos fucking suck for this. In California, the smoking ban doesn't include the native American casinos. You can smoke indoors (and drink at 18+) at Jackson Rancheria.
I remember this happening, and the smell went from just dirty and grim to a little bit of body odour. Many people complained, because they didn't want to smell people's BO, whereas 90% of others were just happy to not have clothes that stunk, or to be able to not have a sore throat after being at a club.
With that said, vaping is so much more commonplace today than smoking was. I've been to a few gigs in the last month or two, and people just vape wherever they want. Pretty much every venue, shopping center, and indoor area says you shouldn't vape, but it's just not enforced at all.
Believe me when I tell you vaping is not more common place today than smoking was then. Yes, vaping is the norm today. Smoking was so common then though, you couldn't drive your car down the street without smelling cigarettes. At a red light you could play count the cigarettes hanging out the windows. Now I see a few vape clouds occasionally as I drive. Just know if you where alive in the early 90s or before and you think vaping today is more common place then cigarettes where then; you are simply remembering it wrong. Cigarettes were everywhere. Everywhere. The world was covered in cigarette butts. In front of every business was an ashtray that stunk, in every gutter of every sidewalk was butts. It was an aroma that was extremely difficult to find reprieve from.
I find vaping way less of an offensive smell than cigarettes. To me, cigarettes smell just gross.
I also don't mind the smell of weed too much usually but maybe that's just me.
What a nightmare