this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 66 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] jballs 17 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago

It was sick near me, the pubs now clean up properly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Did not miss having to dodge cigs at waist height on dance floors though.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's still this way in the place where I live 😖

I hate nicotine so fucking much

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm so glad the USA had such a strong anti-smoking campaign when I was young.

[–] Ulvain 38 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well let's just hope the tobacco industry doesn't get the good idea to cut Elon or Trump a check...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

And 500 more cigarettes

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (6 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

I did say it was one of the few, and vaping did kinda take its place for a lot of young folk

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

You should go to Cologne (or I bet any other major city), now it's weed smell everywhere 😂

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Same experience in Paris a while ago. My sister was about to dig into her spaghetti when someones cigarette ash drifted onto it...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

A smoking section in a bar is like a peeing section in a pool.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

You used to be able to light the rivers on fire too but Nixon helped ruin that.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I wonder if our current world has a specific smell that people from the 80s would notice

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Cannabis. At least most major cities in Europe/North America I find it really common now to openly smell cannabis all hours of the day. Combination of the strains being MUCH stronger and legalization. Even just 20 years back, of course in the Haight in SF or certain parts of NYC you'd smell it, or outside clubs/bars at night. But today I walk through Downtown SF at 830am and smell it every other block. Was in the design district in NYC a few weeks back and same deal.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's common, but absolutely not omnipresent the way cigarette smoke was. Even now it's quite distinctive and noticable, even if common.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Helps that most people don't smoke a pack of joints every day.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's more methane in the atmosphere now. It probably smells like a fart.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

~~Methane needs 5-16PPM [PDF] to be detectable with human smell. Atmospheric Methane is at about 2ppm. So the vast majority of people would not notice a difference. ~~

nvm see below

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

methane doesn't have an odor, you linked to the data sheet of trichlorofluoromethane, a completely different molecule

The gas in your house is artificially made stinky so that people would notice leaks and blow their house up, which happened a lot back when the stinky chemicals weren't added and it was odorless

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

People from the 40s would recognize the current smell of the world.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

I feel like it’s probably the people from the ~1880s-1920s would know the smell of the world today

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I'm hoping car exhaust takes that role.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That basically is my point. It's eye opening for people who don't think about drugs that way.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

It still smells of automotive exhaust. So they might have idea after all.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm old enough to remember the same things on airplanes.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Look at pictures of people in their 30s back in the 70s, and compare them to people in their 30s today. It's a massive difference, I hypothesize that it's the leaded gasoline and secondhand smoke that makes it although I'm not aware of any science to back that up.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Probably a lot of it was first hand smoke.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

And plane and train.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Reminds me of this ancient story I saw making the rounds on Reddit a few years ago: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/12/07/DJs-mummified-body-found-in-club-wall/72001070836281/

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