It used to be a constant conversation when we would go out to eat. My dad would say, “I think someone is smoking in this section!”
A smoking section in a bar is like a peeing section in a pool.
It still smells of automotive exhaust. So they might have idea after all.
One of the few things America has done unambiguously right is the strong anti-snoking campaigns. I think my mom is the only smoker I know anymore
Smoging was almost gone here too like 10 or so years ago. Now it seems like almost everyone is back to cigarettes. I haven’t been on a single date with a non smoker in probably 4 years. I know a guy who has a pretty stubborn g Form of cancer for years, but he would never stop smoking. Everyone is like: yeah it’s unhealthy and all, but i’m cool like that. I get that and i don’t care about your health, it’s gross and you are a walking littering machine. There has to be better ways to be unhealthy
Can’t you smoke indoors still in parts of America?
Laws vary state to state. I walked into a bar in rural Pennsylvania that had ash trays on the bar and the odor hit me in the face as soon as I walked in the door. Don’t miss that one bit. Someone told me it’s still legal in places that don’t serve food
There are still hotels with ‘smoking’ rooms in I think South Carolina and Kentucky at least, you definitely want to make sure you have a non-smoking room or you’ll be inhaling musty old tobacco smells the entire night, something I had made the mistake of once.
basically not in any public space, with rare exception.
It’s so good that most of the og tobacco barons are dead and don’t have much power, otherwise current admin would be introducing mandatory smoking right about now
I did say it was one of the few, and vaping did kinda take its place for a lot of young folk
And it made about as much sense as having a pissing section in a public pool.
I remember in the early-mid 90’s going to pizza hut with my family to cash in one of those sweet book club free pizza stamps and the smoking section always being packed with other families. The other kids would be playing and having a fun time while all the adults enjoyed their refreshing delicious cigarettes while everyone ate. There was no real, “smoking or non-smoking” section. It’s was a smoke filled restaurant with the option to sit shoulder to shoulder with someone smoking a cig or being a few feet away from said smokers.
We visited friends in Serbia in summer. It took me back to this smoking world I had long forgotten. Inside smoking and non smoking tables in crowded cafes side by side. And the craziest part was the indoor playgrounds for kids with cafes adjacent or part of it where you could also smoke (and buy hard liquor). But you know what, my kid could play for less than 1,5€ an hour on a rainy day, even when I lived in Munich there were like 2 indoor playgrounds in a 50 km radius and they cost a fortune. They had them everywhere for dirt cheap. So, I’ll happily get off my high horse.
I remember when the smoking ban was introduced in the UK and the smell of smoke in pubs and clubs was replaced by the stench of body odour, I was actually wanting smoking to return as it was a more tolerable smell!!
Either I’ve got used to it now or people have learned to wash because I don’t notice it anymore!
Did not miss having to dodge cigs at waist height on dance floors though.
It was sick near me, the pubs now clean up properly.
Friends and I love to dance to live music, and back in the day this was often in a local bar, where people were drinking and smoking. It was policy to remove our clothing outside to let it ‘air out’ rather than bring that smoke smell into the house. Of course we were all dancing HARD, in a smoke filled rooms. I wondered if I was in training to be a fire fighter, or what?
I remember going out at night then leaving my jeans on my bathroom floor, then in the morning the whole bathroom would smell like an ashtray. It was the worst!
Unfortunately it’s still like that at my in-laws houses. Whenever they send our kids birthday or Christmas presents in the mail, we have to air out the packages for a few days.
Smoking rates were around 40% up through the 1970s. If you didn’t smoke, you almost certainly got it second hand. Which implies that up through the smoking bans of the 1990s, everyone (except maybe some farmers and other outdoorsy types) were on a psychoactive drug 24/7 at least a little.
I mean sure, nicotine is technically a psychoactive drug. But so is caffeine and theobromine, so should we stop giving kids chocolate? Ban all coffee shops? Honestly not sure what your point is here. Everything is drugs, at least a little.
That basically is my point. It’s eye opening for people who don’t think about drugs that way.
Ah okay i misunderstood. Regardless there were far more harmful things influencing everyone in the 70s than nicotine, like the thousands of toxic additives and carcinogens in secondhand smoke, or the lead in the paint and the gasoline.
And 500 more cigarettes
It’s still this way in the place where I live 😖
I hate nicotine so fucking much
I’m so glad the USA had such a strong anti-smoking campaign when I was young.
Well let’s just hope the tobacco industry doesn’t get the good idea to cut Elon or Trump a check…
Vapes are way more popular with younger audiences though. I don’t think tobacco companies care about getting more people hooked on cigarettes anymore, and they don’t need government help to make vaping more popular.
autistic person here, I still don’t get why people start. Like, I get that once you start you are physically addicted by the nicotine, but why even start? You don’t look cool, you don’t look tough, you only look like a dumbass who’s gonna go broke buying cigarettes, die in their 60s, and spend a painful life while reaching it because you are always exhausted and out of breath
Like shit, do weed or LSD, at least you’ll have a nice time, but cigarettes are just all downsides
But back in the day it was cool.
People generally start when they’re too young to really understand consequences, and there’s a tiny buzz you experience during the first few cigarettes. I think there’s an aspect of self-harm to the psychology of it as well (and obviously it is self-harm, but we don’t really think of it like cutting or something similar)
Thats a new way of thinking about smoking tho, again back in its hayday it was seen as cool, ,tough, adult, badass, rebellious, etc which is part of why it got so popular… along with this alot of kids grew up with smoker parents (or smoker friends) so they didnt see any problem with starting themselfs
Sorry to hear that. Where is this?
I remember going into cafés and things when I was a young man about 14 years old… You wouldn’t be able to see across a small room for the sheer fog bank of cigarette smoke.
We didn’t think anything of it
I remember when I was a teenager working in restaurants during high school I’d come home and shower afterwards. when I’d wash my hair it’d reek of cigarette smoke because I’d spent the last 5-9 hours standing in a giant plume of it.
I picked up smoking in college, I wonder if that was a factor. Thankfully I quit, eventually
Experienced this when I went to Barcelona a few years back. Lovely city, but stepping out into the street felt like stepping into a cigar bar.
I don’t mind it in the streets. I mean, as long as it’s outside it’s okay.
However, I remember a hotel in Spain where clients would be allowed to smoke indoors. It was hell.
Same experience in Paris a while ago. My sister was about to dig into her spaghetti when someones cigarette ash drifted onto it…
I tie it to Germany. I remember getting off the plane the first thing I got hit with was the smell of cigarette smoke. And then wandering through parks and seeing kids smoking with their parents.
You should go to Cologne (or I bet any other major city), now it’s weed smell everywhere 😂
I’m old enough to remember the same things on airplanes.
At least the airplanes were designed to pull smoke downwards, which reduced transmission rates for covid.
