solarpunk memes

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.

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!

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."

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 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.

Ah yes, the smoking section, and the second-hand-smoking section in restaurants

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.

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.

"This is a non-smoking flight." Yeah, fucking who doesn't know that? It's like saying this is non-highjacking flight.

I remember cigarette smoke on airplanes.

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.

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.

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 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.

Now it just smells like vape

What a nightmare

Still true in some parts of the EU