Growing up in the 1960s, my father was a chainsmoker. I never noticed. It was the water that little fish me swam in.
He quit when I was, I dunno, maybe 12 or 13. Suddenly, I noticed tobacco smoke when I encountered it, and it was revolting. I deeply resented having to work in an office in the 1980s that allowed smoking. I deeply resented restaurants with “smoking sections” that were just a half-wall separating me and smokers. I hated flying, with the stench from the “smoking section” filling my air.
Dude my parents chain smoked every day in a poorly ventilated mobile home. It was everywhere and we became noseblind unless it was directly wafting in our face (yuck). When I moved out everything was so much better. I was so happy to be able to breathe and not stink, however, I also left the house addicted to nicotine despite never having smoked myself.
I’m strongly suspicious that some of my current health problems might be tied to second hand smoke.
Edit: one thing I did to get around it was wash my clothes so that I’d have an outfit in the dryer (protected from smoke) to put on in the morning. Combined with morning showers I hope I didn’t smell that much.
Being a non-smoker back then was a giant pain-in-the-ass at any workplace too because any smoker could and would take a break for a cigarette once an hour and then so would the manager and they’d get to be buddies but if you were known as a non-smoker you didn’t get a break because you “didn’t need one” I knew dozens of people, especially in healthcare, who took up smoking because that was the time to be social with each other and the managers.
The hospital I worked at caught a LOT of flak when they started making people clock in and out for smoke breaks in the early 2000s. The smokers complained they only took a couple breaks a day for only a few minutes. Within the first month they found out people spent over half their days on smoke breaks.
Lul that happens in my office but it’s small and they either all know each other or are related. I take desk breaks and because I’m the unofficial office IT nobody says anything. Someone tried once, Im magically never available to help them with IT stuff. Word spreads around this office. Even the owner of the company an office over doesn’t say anything if he sees me on my phone at my desk. I know my worth, they know my worth.
When I quit smoking I refused to quit my breaks. It was just a shop, so it was a solo break, I would take a stick of incense and sit outside while it burned for five minutes. This was pre-smartphone and it was really peaceful.
It still happens. Many jobs allow smokers an hourly or more frequent break, but expect non smokers to keep at it. The result is many people starting just to get the same break they should give everyone.
Dozens of the people I’ve known personally and most of this was in the 90s and early 2000s. I was part of the “smoke free” class of 2000 and the anti-smoking education started in Kindergarten for us. Imagine dozens of 5 year olds crying as their teachers explained with songs and videos how the adults in our lives were all going to die horrible deaths and it was up to us kids to educate them and help them quit. In school, at least twice a year. Yet by the time we reached the workforce, smoking was still a big part of the working culture and I watched pretty much everyone I knew with a full time job take up smoking at one point or another.
My husband tried to take an “apple break” when he was in the air force and his boss laughed at him. He just took up smoking again after that so that he could take the break.
that was the time to be social with each other and the managers.
sadly it’s still a bit true, a friend of mine who was in the same office told me the only time his manager was social was during smoking breaks or after office hours (like at parking spaces etc…)
he quit smoking when i first met him but all the pressure and stuff made him pick smoking again, hope he quits it again.
I think one thing a lot of people don't know now is that back then there was a WHOLE LOT of denial about the detrimental effects of smoking. I think this was mostly the tobacco industry's propaganda, but it worked. I remember talking with someone in the 90s that had some sort of cancer and had been a smoker most of his life. "No way to know if it was the cigarettes" that caused the cancer, he told me.
We are much, much more aware of the downsides of smoking now. The cat is out of the bag.
One of the ingredients is how bloody emotional of an addiction it is. You feel personally challenged if somebody berates your behavior. I know, in a quite rational human being, but I’d feel troubled by posts and papers on the downsides of the addiction.
When you stop you stay to see and smell it too. I want to think it stinks, but somehow somewhere it does still smell nice. I know for a fact that even though I’m through all this, is fall for it again immediately.
It’s such a deep seated thing, if you never had addiction it’s hard to grasp.
Your logic is why I give people in generations before me a bit of a pass. I’m born in '87 and I was alive to remember smoking in cars and restaurants at least, and so if you’re older than me, you may have been told it was okay. But if you’re my age or younger, we have had it slammed into our heads since youth that smoking kills, and so when I see you smoking a cigarette it just hits a little different than our older counterparts.
Childhood asthma, unfortunately. I was born in 1982 and basically everyone smoked everywhere here in the Netherlands. If you had a birthday, you couldn’t see across the room due to the smoke.
Because of it I had childhood asthma, which cleared up immediately when my parents stopped smoking. In the early 90’s, things got a lot better with smoke-free environments. We eventually got full on smoking bans, thank god. As far as I can tell, it didn’t do any permanent damage.
I still absolutely HATE smokers and smoking. It is and was an antisocial thing and children should never have been exposed to it like we were.
Well, Europe is a big place. The percentage of smokers differs from country to country, as well as the anti-smoking legislation and when that was introduced.
In the Netherlands, you cannot smoke in the workplace, restaurants, cinema, on public transport, near a hospital, etc. Sale of tobacco products is illegal to anyone under 18 and we’ve banned things like flavoured vapes.
Because of all these measures, ‘only’ 19 percent of the Dutch population 15 and older smokes, with people lower on the socio-economic ladder smoking more frequently. That’s below the European average of 19.7 percent.
Now, compare that to other countries like France (22 percent), Spain (23 percent) and Bulgaria (28 percent).
Now, those countries have anti-smoking legislation as well. But because they had statistically higher numbers of smokers, it takes longer to see the overall effect.
So depending on where you are in Europe, your perception of smoking habits could vary wildly.
Well we are proud of Dutch manufacturing in general. We like to make good products, even if they might be bad for you: for decades, we had the best weed in terms of THC content. And the Netherlands is also a highly regarded global producer of XTC pills and amphetamines. There’s only so many tulips you can export…
So yes, loose tobacco is one of our fine export products. We Dutch also loved it; it was really popular to use in joints (see: Dutch weed) and rolling your own cigarettes tended to be cheaper than buying packs (we Dutch are notoriously cheap). These days people prefer a vape, or pure joint. And with smoking in general on the decline, loose tobacco is a rare sight here these days.
My sister and I were wee little ones who one week brought home scads of stuff given to us by our school from the American Cancer society. We went running up to our dad screaming "We don't want you to die daddy!" with all that childish exuberance, and he quit cold turkey the next day.
There’s something very wholesome about the thing you asked of him that you thought was simple (“just stop”) and the mountain he moved to give you want you asked for.
But after the bans the first thing that stood out is you don't need to bleach every piece of fabric you took outside every day. The first time I went out, woke up the next day and my clothes didn't smell... you know, smoky I was very confused. Up until that point I assumed that was just what happened to dirty clothes, I didn't realize it was all the cigarettes.
There’s a local bowling alley I went to as a kid. I didn’t go back until 2-3 years after the indoor cigarette ban. Once I went in I immediately said “Something’s different…”
Then someone said there’s no more smoke, that was my Aha! moment.
Oh god, the bowling alleys. The stink of cigarettes, soggy fried food, and machine oil that didn’t just destroy your clothes, but actually permeated your soul.
Both of my parents smoked. My two brothers and I would take a pair of scissors and cut the cigarette in front of their faces when they would go and light up.
I don’t remember how long it took to get them to quit, but they finally did.
It’s just not the health aspect, but smoking is just absolutely disgusting. A smoker just stinks to high heaven and they make everything around them stink long after they leave. How they are not completely mortified by that, I will never know.
Then add the expense and the deleterious health impact.
We couldn’t go anywhere. This continued well into the 2000s when I was a kid, and I had (mild) asthma. We only went out to eat when it was warm enough to sit outside, and I only ever went to take your kid to work day once.
Oh, and I remember riding in the back sear of my grandmothers car when she lit up and cracked the window. I stuffed my head under her seat so I could breathe marginally cleaner air until we got wherever we were going.
If you didn’t have asthma, it was just unpleasant and you put up with it. And probably burned your clothes after visiting a nursing home or bar.
My Grandpa had one of those full size Chevy conversion vans with a sofa/bed in the back. I have very specific memories of opening the back window vent which was a mesh screen, and sticking my face on it as a child so that I could breathe the outside fresh air rather than his smoke.
Loved that man, but that probably wasn’t the best thing to expose a young child to every day.
We were just used to it, even as non-smokers. I grew up with my Dad always smoking and just always recognized the smell, but it was just so common that I didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t until my state banned indoor smoking that it really hit me how everpresent it had been. It was like a few weeks after the ban went into effect that I really noticed it like, “Holy shit, I never realized how much I hate that smoke, it’s so much better now!” I was working at a bar/restaurant at the time, so it just cleared the fucking place up and I was so happy.
Cigarette smoke is very clever and is sure to respect a small piece of red rope strung across the restaurant.
And the real answer is we were all just used to the smell of cigarettes. Going for a meal or going to see grandad? Put on some old clothes that can be put in the washing when you come home because they’ll stink. It never seemed to occur to anyone that they could just stop letting people smoke indoors.
Didn’t go out much and did lots of outdoor activities… When I first started work it was allowed in work vehicles, that stopped after about 2 years.
Stillnallowed in lunch rooms etc.so I ate outside or at my desk. Did not go to restaurants etc becase of the smoking, flew on an Air France flight once from Miami to Paria and it had smoking, no escape, fuck that was bad, still remember it decades later :)
My Dad said it was shocking when he was working (he’s long dead and would have been about 85 if we was still living, he was a non smoker)
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