You didn’t. As a child you got sick a lot with respiratory illnesses and ear infections, and you went to school reeking of cigs. But you didn’t realize it because you were surrounded by it. The quality of what you ate was often not as good either, because your parents couldn’t taste their food. And we’re probably still dealing with the long term health effects without knowing it.
It’s also fun whe you have to scrape the nicotine stains off the windows and scrub the walls when you finally sell your parents home.
The epigenetic effects of this sort of damage take a couple generations to clear up. Gen alpha is probably the first one to widely grow up without these being a problem.
I was so thankful my grandparents' house was sold to be torn down and rebuilt. There was zero chance that the house with windows NEVER open for 50+ years could have been cleaned or deoderized.
It’s also fun whe you have to scrape the nicotine stains off the windows and scrub the walls when you finally sell your parents home.
I recently bought my house. I thought it was an odd choice for the walls to be done in a pale yellow color, It was only when I started redecorating that I realized it was actually white paint. It also explains why all the rooms in the house have the same carpet, their estate agent probably made them change the carpet when they sold the house because it's brand new, and the cheapest option.
You grew up in it and didn't notice.
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.
one of the first times I noticed was when it was banned on flights
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.
My wife tells me that when she used to go clubbing she would come home with burn marks/holes in her dresses all the time.
Got one on my brand new t-shirt I had bought with my student loan money... That was fucking annoying.
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.
Smokers getting better chances at promotion because they smoked with the bosses was standard when I started working.
Yeah, maybe we worked at the same place!
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.
This was an issue in the military too. The smokers would take their smoking breaks. So I started taking non-smoker breaks. lol
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.
Wow. Dozens of people started smoking to be outside with the smokers? That's crazy. That must have been during the denial phase in smoking's history.
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.
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.
How did I survive? Resentfully.
I grew up in the 80's / early 90s when smoking indoors was still common (restaurants, buses, etc). You just kind of got used to it.
Eventually I started smoking, and it was less of a bother 😆 (have since quit).
The thing I never could figure out, even as a smoker, was how people smoked in a car with the windows rolled up. It was unbearable even being the one smoking. Even in the dead of winter and negative one million degrees outside, I always had to have a window cracked.
I live in a country where there are still bars where you can legally smoke indoors. One of my favourite bars is like that even though I am a non-smoker. I always feel like I can burn all my clothes after an evening there. And the hangovers are way worse.
Going on a long car trip in winter as a kid sucked so hard. Parents are in the front seats, you're in the back. They're smoking more often than normal because of boredom. You're freezing your ass off because they're cracking the window, and the smoke is awful.
Same here. My Dad was a smoker and I remember sitting on the top deck of buses with him whilst he smoked. Can't remember ever noticing the smell really. I started smoking myself at 15. Quit about 10 years later. Now I can smell it so clearly. I can tell if someone is a smoker as soon as I get anywhere near them.
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.
You should BOTH be very proud that he did that. Quitting smoking can be very difficult.
Ask my asthma. I dunno if there's direct causation but being exposed to cigarette smoke from infancy damn sure didn't help.
Same dude. I don’t know about you but I also had sinus and ear infections out the ass growing up, which I don’t know for sure was related but it sure seems like it would be.
Absolutely. I was constantly sick. Eventually had tubes placed in my ears and apparently I almost died on the operating table during my tonsillectomy. Fun times!
Ha, I remember being a kid. I would be with my parents at a campground all Summer. We had a fairly small trailer. I remember one night there was a NFL(Patriots) game on and my parents and another couple were in the trailer watching. There was so much smoke that I felt like I was going to die.
I ended up screaming at them all. I think they were actually shocked at how angry and loud I screamed. They didn't say a word. Turned off the TV, took a few things and left the trailer. They even made sure to keep the door open so the air would vent through the screen door.
My father died of lung cancer less than 10 years later in '89.
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.
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.
I appreciate your reasoned approach.
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.
You are talking to the survivors.
I grew up in a small town, and when I was 17, I signed up for the volunteer fire department in town. Part of the in-processing was getting a chest x-ray so they knew how fucked your lungs were before any exposure related to the position. Nurse asked me how much I smoked and thought I was lying when I (truthfully) said I didn't. She said my lungs looked like I'd been smoking at least a pack a day for at least a year.
My mom and every step-dad smoked like chimneys, spent a lot of my childhood in bars when smoking indoors was still legal. I don't know if the nurse was exaggerating the results, and I don't have a copy of the x-ray from back then. I also picked up the habit myself around 20 in the military and smoked a pack to 2 a day until we found out my wife was pregnant with our first kid. We both quit cold turkey that day. I assume I'll have lung or skin cancer at some point between all that childhood exposure, the damage I did to myself smoking for a decade, the aircraft fumes, and burn pit exposure from the military...and we didn't worry about sunscreen like we should have in the 80s/90s either.
Trent Crimm, The Independent. I have a question, how many step dads did you had?
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.
I thought smoking was still very common in Europe?
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.
Interesting. Years ago before I quit I rolled my own and the best lose tobacco I could find in the States was Dutch.
Funny how things change.
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.
It really sucked when people could smoke anywhere. I remember so many times when I was at a restaurant just starting into a nice meal and suddenly all I could smell or taste was cigarette (or cigar) smoke. It was gross.
I also remember when airlines had a smoking section, which was usually the back several rows. I remember asking for a seat in the non-smoking section, and the one I got was one row in front of the smoking section; there was probably more smoke there than in the last row of the smoking section.
You washed your clothes a lot. And even worse for girls with long hair.
You would skip restaurants during busy times.
Sometimes you would carry an extra jacket in your car trunk to put on when going into a smokey place, so you could take it off and hopefully not have too much smoke smell on you if you weren't going to shower soon.
My family smoked like chimneys. I closed myself in my bedroom and avoided un-necessary contact.
Great grandmother got emphysema and died.
Great grandfather got throat cancer, a tracheotomy, and died.
Grandfather got lung cancer and died.
Mom got cancer and survived.
Dad had a massive heart attack and died.
My parents only smoked when they had company at home and it was still so dusgusting. Not the smoke itself necessarily, but the morning after when the whole house smelled like old ashtray.
I had a neighbour growing up who would smoke like a crazy person. Her house was quite literally yellow on the insinde. Surprisingly she lived to be almost 70.
There are some that manage to make it a long life with what most would have issues with (I.e. a lifetime of smoking.) A good friend died recently and he made it to what I would consider a long life. Was able to retire and stay active for years. Got diagnosed with cancer, two weeks later dead after the first chemo therapy. I'm very happy he didn't live a much longer life - the pain that would have put him in would have been unbearable, and given how quickly he passed in guessing the cancer was fairly advanced...
Man, it was rough.
At family friends you'd take a break to get some fresh air or a bathroom break, as they smoked indoors and you had to be nice.
At restaurants I would push my parents for non smoking. One time they skipped that option and it impacted me so much I threw up all over the back seat.
They no longer opted for the smoking section ever again.
Man smoking in restaurants was wild in hindsight. It was always disgusting but it was normalised. The thing that always bothered me the most was that when i was out with my family as a child was that we were like 12 people and one guy smoked, we usually sat in the smoking section. That was also the case when i was older, that one or two smokers out of 10 people were always the cranky bitches.
Or sitting in a restaurant where the non smoking tavle was next to the smoking table. So you would sit back to back to a guy who was smoking while wou were eating. Wild times, glad that shit is over
You are totally right, it's crazy to think back to it. I was that 12 year old once or twice.
Even more screwed up was there were smoking sections with walls or without. Without.. well, it's smoke. So it's going into the non smoking section. With walls? It was like an aquarium.
It's still a thing in most of the world.
I'd probably say "in much of the world" unless you want to take the time to prove your claim.
You can say as you wish, the limitation on smoking is a first world concept.
This is completely incorrect. In fact when I studied Spanish in college, one assignment had us reading about an anti smoking campaign in Argentina from the early 2000s.
Okay? There was one here in Southeast Asia, yet everyone still smokes indoors. Some assignment you did in a language class about a campaign in a country you haven't visited is irrelevant.
I then moved to Argentina, so there's that...
A lot of people didn’t.
God only knows how. Any time I went somewhere with my parents the car windows were up, the aircon was off and they were both chain smoking.
They both died of smoking-related illnesses.
90's kid with smoker parents. You made do with the migraines. It was the absolute worst in winter car rides on bright days. Blinding snow plus second hand smoke migraine and no rolling down the window more than a tiny crack. Pure hell.
Yes. Migraines. It wasn't my parents but an early job in the late 80s. Dude next to me smoked so much it was a problem with fouling the equipment. We had to re-do jobs all the time for failure to clean the settled soot. I left the job and one of the reasons was the constant migraines.
Workplaces were the worst, I kept catching other people's second hand smoke at work. Worst was when I went to an encounter group type thing and a guy was smoking and I got a faceful.... and bronchitis for the rest of the trip. And that was in the 90's
At least in my own home and car I could set the rules and rules was take that shit outside
in the '90s*
We just sat in the non-smoking section.
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.
Even if it's not the 70s or 80s, I still grew up with lots of second hand smoke in the 90s.
Once a year my village had a little comedy thing (german carnival) for one evening in the local gym. You couldn't see the stage after the first hour if you were like 10m away from the stage. It didn't matter, smoking, drinking and just a little music and everybody was happy.
And it was the same in every restaurant or subway station. It just felt normal, it smelled the same no matter where you went and everybody smelled like cold smoke.
After it got shut down in quiet a rush, the new normal came so quickly, that even today nobody can believe how it was just 20-25 years ago.
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.
My father gets headaches if he’s around smoke for more than a few minutes. One thing this lead to is avoiding restaurants at peak hours. So when I was a kid if we ate out we always went at 11;00 for lunch or about 5:00 for dinner. The idea was to be out before the people in the smoking section had time to light up their after meal cig. Of course occasionally you’d get the before meal cig too.
But as a result even 20 years after smoking in restaurants was banned where I live all of my family is in the habit of eating early.
You really did get used to it in the sense that I don't remember it making me sick to be around it(my parents, aunt and grandma all smoked around me from birth to about 14 when I was diagnosed with asthma). But now if I'm around any cigarette smoke at all I'm sick for at least a week (congestion, cough, sinus shit) and I don't know how I rode in a car as a child with 4 adults ripping butts. Disgusting.
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.
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.
So when you were like 8 years old and you went into the bathroom at 2 in the morning and saw your parents' cigarettes you might try one out and wonder what was wrong with them.
Did this to one of my aunts. Never again, tried weed a couple months ago, also no thanks.
Nothing against people who want to smoke weed, I voted to legalize it. I just can't stand it.
It's not for everyone--some people have very strong reactions to it, but they may also have strong reactions to alcohol and nicotine. Alternatively, most people get zonked out of their gourd from between many weeks and many months when trying antidepressants or anxiolytics. Weed is probably not different in that regard.
I hit a joint like 4 times. I didn't really feel any effects, it just felt uncomfortable going in.
I also downed a regular orange juice sized tall glass of whisky, took a while to take effect but oh boy did I feel that. I just don't like not feeling like myself I think. Don't like feeling under the influence of anything. I avoid meds for that reason too unless they're necessary.
Yeah I figured that was the case. I have also not enjoyed feeling like I've lost control, which made it hard for me to get on to weed in the first place. I have since learned that it is a great medication for me and makes my life better, but I had to get through a lot of anxiety first. Now I don't feel it at all.
If you hit a joint 4 times on top of a cup of whisky and didn't feel it, you didn't smoke it right. No offense meant, it's really common for people to not understand how to inhale smoke properly when they start.
Probably fair I tried inhaling with my lungs like I was told but I had no prior experience. I also don't know how strong or good the weed was, as I understand it that can change how it affects someone, I assumed my girlfriend wouldn't give me crap stuff. The whisky was way later in the day granted.
It was so normalized you didn't really notice or think about it, or at least I didn't. It was just a thing you suffered through.
Well at that age I was a baby so I was mostly close to the floor
Both my parents smoked in the 90's and I never really thought about it until I was like 12, by then it was being banned in many more places. I thought cars smelled weird that didn't reek of smoke. I also sometimes smelled of smoke and probably smelled more to people who were not around smokers. Being around smokers from 0 -18 knock on wood I haven't yet had been diagnosed with anything. Second hand smoke everyday. I never took it up, as we know its not good for you. But I dont mind being around smokers, brings a sort of nostalgia for me the second hand smoke that is.
It was disgusting. You could only deal with it. No choice. As soon as someone smoked, I noticed right away. I would get coughing fits if anyone smoked near me at a restaurant. In bars it was horrible. In one particular case my throat was feeling like it was burning due to how thick the cigarette smoke was in the bar. And all your clothes would smell and it reeked in your room or apartment for a couple of days until you cleaned them. I don't miss that time at all. I'm so glad smoking is banned everywhere now.
If only they would ban smoking in apartment or condo buildings next. It shouldn't be allowed when you live in close proximity to other people and your smoke gets into their home.
Both my parents smoked so I didn't notice it growing up. Once I went to college and got away from that environment I really started to notice it all around me. Nothing was worse than opening up the closet and smelling the smoke on the coat you wore the night before at a bar. Luckily, my county was an early adopter of non-smoking sections and eventually outright banning and that changed everything.
So, I'm a bit younger than the era you're looking for, but my dad was an alcoholic and I remember as a kid being in the local bar and being juuuust short enough that I was just under the smoke line. I had to breach that line to get up on a bar stool and ask for a kitty cocktail. It always felt like I crossed the border to another world whenever I did.
I think I need to use more force to clear my lungs than my peers, but other than that my lack of athletic ability is mostly self inflicted.
That's funny.
I had “childhood asthma” and had to carry around an inhaler.
We bowled a lot
Australian guy here
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)
Well I became a smoker myself (I quit in 2011) but even then I hated smoking indoors and never smoked in my apartment.
The same way people survived “gardyloo!” days. When you’re surrounded by shit it probably didn’t seem quite as bad as it would to us today.
I didn’t like all the smoke as a kid, but it is more noticeable and horrible these days since it is much less common, in my view anyway.
TIL about gardyloo
You can get a feel of it by being around a lot of fragrances. You know the people who are noseblind so wear a lot of perfume/cologne. They putting on fragrances in their lotions or other stuff. Their house and/or car reeks but they barely notice. Same feel and they don't even notice the smell, it normal to them. Their kids and pets are getting sick and they don't care.
I forgot to add that you are considering the problem if you bring it up.
Don't forget the smog and pot smoke. We grew gills back then.
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.
It begs the question...
What the actual fuck?
How they are not completely mortified by that, I will never know.
I once heard a claim that they just can't smell it themselves. I can believe it, because our senses tend to filter out sensations that are continuous.
The smoke itself also just clogs up your sense of taste and smell so you can also not notice other scents even if they aren't constant.
I was going to say this, too, but I was too lazy to fact check so I left it out. c: In other words, I've heard about this too.
That's the neat part - sometimes you didn't.
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.
My dad would always smoke at home. It was what it was, standard in Greece at the time, so what could I do? Ask him not to smoke so I could get beaten up? So I survived by shutting up and leaving home after 18.
Same way we're doing smog?
Cigarette smoke was everywhere indoors, but the air outside was better than today (in Oregon anyway). And the air quality on planes was actually better before they banned smoking than after because the airlines immediately turned the expensive cabin air re-circulation way down.
Air is significantly cleaner now than the 70s/80s, and airplanes still continuously replace the air because it’s not airtight. It’s pressurized but always leaking a bit. It is not expensive nor was it turned off. About half the air is recirculated after passing through a HEPA filter, the rest is fresh air (well, fresh bleed air).
You didn’t. As a child you got sick a lot with respiratory illnesses and ear infections, and you went to school reeking of cigs. But you didn’t realize it because you were surrounded by it. The quality of what you ate was often not as good either, because your parents couldn’t taste their food. And we’re probably still dealing with the long term health effects without knowing it.
It’s also fun whe you have to scrape the nicotine stains off the windows and scrub the walls when you finally sell your parents home.
The epigenetic effects of this sort of damage take a couple generations to clear up. Gen alpha is probably the first one to widely grow up without these being a problem.
I was so thankful my grandparents' house was sold to be torn down and rebuilt. There was zero chance that the house with windows NEVER open for 50+ years could have been cleaned or deoderized.
I recently bought my house. I thought it was an odd choice for the walls to be done in a pale yellow color, It was only when I started redecorating that I realized it was actually white paint. It also explains why all the rooms in the house have the same carpet, their estate agent probably made them change the carpet when they sold the house because it's brand new, and the cheapest option.
You grew up in it and didn't notice.
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.
one of the first times I noticed was when it was banned on flights
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.
My wife tells me that when she used to go clubbing she would come home with burn marks/holes in her dresses all the time.
Got one on my brand new t-shirt I had bought with my student loan money... That was fucking annoying.
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.
Smokers getting better chances at promotion because they smoked with the bosses was standard when I started working.
Yeah, maybe we worked at the same place!
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.
This was an issue in the military too. The smokers would take their smoking breaks. So I started taking non-smoker breaks. lol
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.
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.
Wow. Dozens of people started smoking to be outside with the smokers? That's crazy. That must have been during the denial phase in smoking's history.
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.
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.
How did I survive? Resentfully.
I grew up in the 80's / early 90s when smoking indoors was still common (restaurants, buses, etc). You just kind of got used to it.
Eventually I started smoking, and it was less of a bother 😆 (have since quit).
The thing I never could figure out, even as a smoker, was how people smoked in a car with the windows rolled up. It was unbearable even being the one smoking. Even in the dead of winter and negative one million degrees outside, I always had to have a window cracked.
I live in a country where there are still bars where you can legally smoke indoors. One of my favourite bars is like that even though I am a non-smoker. I always feel like I can burn all my clothes after an evening there. And the hangovers are way worse.
Going on a long car trip in winter as a kid sucked so hard. Parents are in the front seats, you're in the back. They're smoking more often than normal because of boredom. You're freezing your ass off because they're cracking the window, and the smoke is awful.
Same here. My Dad was a smoker and I remember sitting on the top deck of buses with him whilst he smoked. Can't remember ever noticing the smell really. I started smoking myself at 15. Quit about 10 years later. Now I can smell it so clearly. I can tell if someone is a smoker as soon as I get anywhere near them.
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.
You should BOTH be very proud that he did that. Quitting smoking can be very difficult.
Ask my asthma. I dunno if there's direct causation but being exposed to cigarette smoke from infancy damn sure didn't help.
Same dude. I don’t know about you but I also had sinus and ear infections out the ass growing up, which I don’t know for sure was related but it sure seems like it would be.
Absolutely. I was constantly sick. Eventually had tubes placed in my ears and apparently I almost died on the operating table during my tonsillectomy. Fun times!
Ha, I remember being a kid. I would be with my parents at a campground all Summer. We had a fairly small trailer. I remember one night there was a NFL(Patriots) game on and my parents and another couple were in the trailer watching. There was so much smoke that I felt like I was going to die.
I ended up screaming at them all. I think they were actually shocked at how angry and loud I screamed. They didn't say a word. Turned off the TV, took a few things and left the trailer. They even made sure to keep the door open so the air would vent through the screen door.
My father died of lung cancer less than 10 years later in '89.
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.
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.
I appreciate your reasoned approach.
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.
You are talking to the survivors.
I grew up in a small town, and when I was 17, I signed up for the volunteer fire department in town. Part of the in-processing was getting a chest x-ray so they knew how fucked your lungs were before any exposure related to the position. Nurse asked me how much I smoked and thought I was lying when I (truthfully) said I didn't. She said my lungs looked like I'd been smoking at least a pack a day for at least a year.
My mom and every step-dad smoked like chimneys, spent a lot of my childhood in bars when smoking indoors was still legal. I don't know if the nurse was exaggerating the results, and I don't have a copy of the x-ray from back then. I also picked up the habit myself around 20 in the military and smoked a pack to 2 a day until we found out my wife was pregnant with our first kid. We both quit cold turkey that day. I assume I'll have lung or skin cancer at some point between all that childhood exposure, the damage I did to myself smoking for a decade, the aircraft fumes, and burn pit exposure from the military...and we didn't worry about sunscreen like we should have in the 80s/90s either.
Trent Crimm, The Independent. I have a question, how many step dads did you had?
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.
I thought smoking was still very common in Europe?
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.
Interesting. Years ago before I quit I rolled my own and the best lose tobacco I could find in the States was Dutch.
Funny how things change.
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.
It really sucked when people could smoke anywhere. I remember so many times when I was at a restaurant just starting into a nice meal and suddenly all I could smell or taste was cigarette (or cigar) smoke. It was gross.
I also remember when airlines had a smoking section, which was usually the back several rows. I remember asking for a seat in the non-smoking section, and the one I got was one row in front of the smoking section; there was probably more smoke there than in the last row of the smoking section.
You washed your clothes a lot. And even worse for girls with long hair.
You would skip restaurants during busy times.
Sometimes you would carry an extra jacket in your car trunk to put on when going into a smokey place, so you could take it off and hopefully not have too much smoke smell on you if you weren't going to shower soon.
My family smoked like chimneys. I closed myself in my bedroom and avoided un-necessary contact.
Great grandmother got emphysema and died.
Great grandfather got throat cancer, a tracheotomy, and died.
Grandfather got lung cancer and died.
Mom got cancer and survived.
Dad had a massive heart attack and died.
My parents only smoked when they had company at home and it was still so dusgusting. Not the smoke itself necessarily, but the morning after when the whole house smelled like old ashtray.
I had a neighbour growing up who would smoke like a crazy person. Her house was quite literally yellow on the insinde. Surprisingly she lived to be almost 70.
There are some that manage to make it a long life with what most would have issues with (I.e. a lifetime of smoking.) A good friend died recently and he made it to what I would consider a long life. Was able to retire and stay active for years. Got diagnosed with cancer, two weeks later dead after the first chemo therapy. I'm very happy he didn't live a much longer life - the pain that would have put him in would have been unbearable, and given how quickly he passed in guessing the cancer was fairly advanced...
Man, it was rough.
At family friends you'd take a break to get some fresh air or a bathroom break, as they smoked indoors and you had to be nice.
At restaurants I would push my parents for non smoking. One time they skipped that option and it impacted me so much I threw up all over the back seat.
They no longer opted for the smoking section ever again.
Man smoking in restaurants was wild in hindsight. It was always disgusting but it was normalised. The thing that always bothered me the most was that when i was out with my family as a child was that we were like 12 people and one guy smoked, we usually sat in the smoking section. That was also the case when i was older, that one or two smokers out of 10 people were always the cranky bitches.
Or sitting in a restaurant where the non smoking tavle was next to the smoking table. So you would sit back to back to a guy who was smoking while wou were eating. Wild times, glad that shit is over
You are totally right, it's crazy to think back to it. I was that 12 year old once or twice.
Even more screwed up was there were smoking sections with walls or without. Without.. well, it's smoke. So it's going into the non smoking section. With walls? It was like an aquarium.
It's still a thing in most of the world.
I'd probably say "in much of the world" unless you want to take the time to prove your claim.
You can say as you wish, the limitation on smoking is a first world concept.
This is completely incorrect. In fact when I studied Spanish in college, one assignment had us reading about an anti smoking campaign in Argentina from the early 2000s.
Okay? There was one here in Southeast Asia, yet everyone still smokes indoors. Some assignment you did in a language class about a campaign in a country you haven't visited is irrelevant.
I then moved to Argentina, so there's that...
A lot of people didn’t.
God only knows how. Any time I went somewhere with my parents the car windows were up, the aircon was off and they were both chain smoking.
They both died of smoking-related illnesses.
90's kid with smoker parents. You made do with the migraines. It was the absolute worst in winter car rides on bright days. Blinding snow plus second hand smoke migraine and no rolling down the window more than a tiny crack. Pure hell.
Yes. Migraines. It wasn't my parents but an early job in the late 80s. Dude next to me smoked so much it was a problem with fouling the equipment. We had to re-do jobs all the time for failure to clean the settled soot. I left the job and one of the reasons was the constant migraines.
Workplaces were the worst, I kept catching other people's second hand smoke at work. Worst was when I went to an encounter group type thing and a guy was smoking and I got a faceful.... and bronchitis for the rest of the trip. And that was in the 90's
At least in my own home and car I could set the rules and rules was take that shit outside
We just sat in the non-smoking section.
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.
Even if it's not the 70s or 80s, I still grew up with lots of second hand smoke in the 90s. Once a year my village had a little comedy thing (german carnival) for one evening in the local gym. You couldn't see the stage after the first hour if you were like 10m away from the stage. It didn't matter, smoking, drinking and just a little music and everybody was happy. And it was the same in every restaurant or subway station. It just felt normal, it smelled the same no matter where you went and everybody smelled like cold smoke. After it got shut down in quiet a rush, the new normal came so quickly, that even today nobody can believe how it was just 20-25 years ago.
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.
My father gets headaches if he’s around smoke for more than a few minutes. One thing this lead to is avoiding restaurants at peak hours. So when I was a kid if we ate out we always went at 11;00 for lunch or about 5:00 for dinner. The idea was to be out before the people in the smoking section had time to light up their after meal cig. Of course occasionally you’d get the before meal cig too.
But as a result even 20 years after smoking in restaurants was banned where I live all of my family is in the habit of eating early.
You really did get used to it in the sense that I don't remember it making me sick to be around it(my parents, aunt and grandma all smoked around me from birth to about 14 when I was diagnosed with asthma). But now if I'm around any cigarette smoke at all I'm sick for at least a week (congestion, cough, sinus shit) and I don't know how I rode in a car as a child with 4 adults ripping butts. Disgusting.
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.
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.
So when you were like 8 years old and you went into the bathroom at 2 in the morning and saw your parents' cigarettes you might try one out and wonder what was wrong with them.
Did this to one of my aunts. Never again, tried weed a couple months ago, also no thanks. Nothing against people who want to smoke weed, I voted to legalize it. I just can't stand it.
It's not for everyone--some people have very strong reactions to it, but they may also have strong reactions to alcohol and nicotine. Alternatively, most people get zonked out of their gourd from between many weeks and many months when trying antidepressants or anxiolytics. Weed is probably not different in that regard.
I hit a joint like 4 times. I didn't really feel any effects, it just felt uncomfortable going in. I also downed a regular orange juice sized tall glass of whisky, took a while to take effect but oh boy did I feel that. I just don't like not feeling like myself I think. Don't like feeling under the influence of anything. I avoid meds for that reason too unless they're necessary.
Yeah I figured that was the case. I have also not enjoyed feeling like I've lost control, which made it hard for me to get on to weed in the first place. I have since learned that it is a great medication for me and makes my life better, but I had to get through a lot of anxiety first. Now I don't feel it at all.
If you hit a joint 4 times on top of a cup of whisky and didn't feel it, you didn't smoke it right. No offense meant, it's really common for people to not understand how to inhale smoke properly when they start.
Probably fair I tried inhaling with my lungs like I was told but I had no prior experience. I also don't know how strong or good the weed was, as I understand it that can change how it affects someone, I assumed my girlfriend wouldn't give me crap stuff. The whisky was way later in the day granted.
It was so normalized you didn't really notice or think about it, or at least I didn't. It was just a thing you suffered through.
Well at that age I was a baby so I was mostly close to the floor
Both my parents smoked in the 90's and I never really thought about it until I was like 12, by then it was being banned in many more places. I thought cars smelled weird that didn't reek of smoke. I also sometimes smelled of smoke and probably smelled more to people who were not around smokers. Being around smokers from 0 -18 knock on wood I haven't yet had been diagnosed with anything. Second hand smoke everyday. I never took it up, as we know its not good for you. But I dont mind being around smokers, brings a sort of nostalgia for me the second hand smoke that is.
It was disgusting. You could only deal with it. No choice. As soon as someone smoked, I noticed right away. I would get coughing fits if anyone smoked near me at a restaurant. In bars it was horrible. In one particular case my throat was feeling like it was burning due to how thick the cigarette smoke was in the bar. And all your clothes would smell and it reeked in your room or apartment for a couple of days until you cleaned them. I don't miss that time at all. I'm so glad smoking is banned everywhere now.
If only they would ban smoking in apartment or condo buildings next. It shouldn't be allowed when you live in close proximity to other people and your smoke gets into their home.
Both my parents smoked so I didn't notice it growing up. Once I went to college and got away from that environment I really started to notice it all around me. Nothing was worse than opening up the closet and smelling the smoke on the coat you wore the night before at a bar. Luckily, my county was an early adopter of non-smoking sections and eventually outright banning and that changed everything.
So, I'm a bit younger than the era you're looking for, but my dad was an alcoholic and I remember as a kid being in the local bar and being juuuust short enough that I was just under the smoke line. I had to breach that line to get up on a bar stool and ask for a kitty cocktail. It always felt like I crossed the border to another world whenever I did.
I think I need to use more force to clear my lungs than my peers, but other than that my lack of athletic ability is mostly self inflicted.
That's funny.
I had “childhood asthma” and had to carry around an inhaler.
We bowled a lot
Australian guy here
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)
Well I became a smoker myself (I quit in 2011) but even then I hated smoking indoors and never smoked in my apartment.
The same way people survived “gardyloo!” days. When you’re surrounded by shit it probably didn’t seem quite as bad as it would to us today.
I didn’t like all the smoke as a kid, but it is more noticeable and horrible these days since it is much less common, in my view anyway.
TIL about gardyloo
You can get a feel of it by being around a lot of fragrances. You know the people who are noseblind so wear a lot of perfume/cologne. They putting on fragrances in their lotions or other stuff. Their house and/or car reeks but they barely notice. Same feel and they don't even notice the smell, it normal to them. Their kids and pets are getting sick and they don't care. I forgot to add that you are considering the problem if you bring it up.
Don't forget the smog and pot smoke. We grew gills back then.
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.
It begs the question...
What the actual fuck?
I once heard a claim that they just can't smell it themselves. I can believe it, because our senses tend to filter out sensations that are continuous.
The smoke itself also just clogs up your sense of taste and smell so you can also not notice other scents even if they aren't constant.
I was going to say this, too, but I was too lazy to fact check so I left it out. c: In other words, I've heard about this too.
That's the neat part - sometimes you didn't.
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.
My dad would always smoke at home. It was what it was, standard in Greece at the time, so what could I do? Ask him not to smoke so I could get beaten up? So I survived by shutting up and leaving home after 18.
Same way we're doing smog?
Cigarette smoke was everywhere indoors, but the air outside was better than today (in Oregon anyway). And the air quality on planes was actually better before they banned smoking than after because the airlines immediately turned the expensive cabin air re-circulation way down.
Air is significantly cleaner now than the 70s/80s, and airplanes still continuously replace the air because it’s not airtight. It’s pressurized but always leaking a bit. It is not expensive nor was it turned off. About half the air is recirculated after passing through a HEPA filter, the rest is fresh air (well, fresh bleed air).