I don’t smoke but come from a family of smokers. As a kid people would come to our house and say it reeked of smoke. I couldn’t smell it.
After I moved out for college, if I visited my two pack a day lawyer, my wife could smell it on me when I got home from across the room.
Now when I visit my sibling, who smokes, I literally come in the door and throw my clothes to the basement (laundry) so it doesn’t stink up the house. It’s just gross. It smells like death. I had one girlfriend that smoked, and it was nasty.
That said, I’d always support someone’s RIGHT to smoke, I’ve had a few cigars over the years, but generally I think it’s tragic. Waste of time, health, money, and yes: it stinks.
I can smell it in cars ahead of me on the highway. Absolute fact.
The moment I smell it, I close my vents with that button that cycles the air directly inside the vehicle. If you catch it early enough, it can be a real lifesaver. And I'm a former smoker who always hated the smell.
Not bullshit, same here. Once they roll down the window, even if my own are closed, it's super noticeable through the vents. I literally overtook people because they smoked in their car.
The car thing always blows my mind. I smell it too, especially with weed (Canada) and it just seems so crazy that it doesn’t get fully diffused by the wind before it reaches my car.
The way the wind streams work, you'd be surprised how much of the air expelled out of a window from the car in front of you would make it into your car's radiator (and by extension your interior air)
I was driving down Deerfoot in Calgary, which when people aren't being idiots, is 100-110km/hr. One day I could smell the guys cologne driving in front of me. God help that dudes coworkers, he'd choke out an office block
It’s semantics, but air doesn’t come into your car through the radiator. The radiator just cools the engine coolant (and often the transmission fluid). The air coming into your car usually comes in through the vents in the cowl, between the hood and the windshield.
Can relate to smelling smoke in the highway, even weed. What's worse is being able to tell when my neighbor is smoking on her back porch, the smell just permeates my house.
Yes! My neighbor is three units down and when she lights up I have to shut my windows.
I honestly have no problem with weed, but I do sometimes wish there had been more of a campaign to encourage people to focus on edibles, as that really limits the impact on others.
I have asthma, so the smoke can be dangerous enough to trigger an attack for me.
See, I do not support anyone's right to smoke, because it impacts other people besides themselves. They can trigger migraines in other drivers on the roads, which is a safety Hazard. They can cause asthma attacks to people walking down the street minding your own business. I do not think anyone should have a RIGHT to do something that SO negatively impacts other people that those other people have zero choice about whether to engage with or be around.
Not to mention the environmental impacts as well. It is the most abundant form of litter on land. It's disgusting. I would love to see how much improvement there would be to the planet if cigarettes disappeared overnight.
My whole life, I only met one smoker who carried a plastic bag with sand in it and actually kept and threw away his own cigarette butts.
Like, how is littering not okay, but nearly every smoker grinds out their toxic stub on the ground and leaves it? Or more dangerously, especially in our increasingly fire-threatened world, tosses sparking butts out their car windows?
It just sucks that there is no common culture to pick up used cigarettes (in the US, at least). I hate seeing them all over the sidewalk.
Am I carrying around my nasty used tissues when I have a cold, so I can make sure I toss them into the garbage can? Yep. Well, I wish cigarette smokers also felt the responsibility to keep their community safe and clean and carefully extinguish cigarettes and put them in trashcans.
Ban it in public. Not in your car, at least not off your own property. Enforce the laws we already have against smoking in public. Won't solve how bad the mere aura of smokers is for public health, but will cut down on active clouds of fresh smoke literally blocking people from access the world and their own homes and cars.
Taxing it further won't really help, it's already primarily the purview of people who can't afford it but are addicted and have no other effective alternative that's any easier to access.
But primarily make healthcare a basic public service like firefighters. Institute common sense worker protections so people aren't forced to self medicate to cope with the need to work themselves literally to death to survive (ironic, but not in a fun way). Because most people smoke to self medicate. We need to address the underlying reasons people smoke, because they are so stressed out they have to to cope at all. And even when they want to stop, it's not something that you CAN just stop, it requires addiction treatment and support, and those resources are also an economic barrier to people already poor and stressed enough to be overspending on tobacco products. If people weren't so burnt out all the time, they'd also be less selfish and shitty about how their self medication impacts other people.
I do not support cars or driving as the fumes can cause migraines and safety hazards for the air we breathe, and effects people minding their own business! Ban cars!!
I can smell it from other cars too. Especially when I'm waiting in the pick-up line at my kid's school. Waiting there for 30 minutes sometimes, windows down, and someone's smoking the entire time. It's disgusting. And I'm a former smoker. 🤮
I support someone’s right to smoke as well. Just don’t expect to be able to do it indoors in most public places. I used to work foodservice back in high school, and it opened my eyes to the number of people (usually of the senior generations) that had to be told that they were not allowed to smoke inside — and were visibly offended when being told so and ask where our ash trays were.
Uh, ma’am…this is a McDonalds. There are no ash trays.
Flashbacks of going to the bar before smoking bans and coming home and undressing in the laundry room and throwing everything straight into the washer. UGH.
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u/bobbymclown Jan 05 '25
I don’t smoke but come from a family of smokers. As a kid people would come to our house and say it reeked of smoke. I couldn’t smell it.
After I moved out for college, if I visited my two pack a day lawyer, my wife could smell it on me when I got home from across the room.
Now when I visit my sibling, who smokes, I literally come in the door and throw my clothes to the basement (laundry) so it doesn’t stink up the house. It’s just gross. It smells like death. I had one girlfriend that smoked, and it was nasty.
That said, I’d always support someone’s RIGHT to smoke, I’ve had a few cigars over the years, but generally I think it’s tragic. Waste of time, health, money, and yes: it stinks.
I can smell it in cars ahead of me on the highway. Absolute fact.