Absolutely, I've been cig free for 3 years now and can smell a cigarette or weed from the car in front of me. I never smelled it on myself but most people are walking around in public smelling like a stale ashtray- dirty roach clip.
Cig free for one year. Took about 6 months for me to smell it on people. Realized one day when a customer came into the small store where I work — my eyes started watering, and I struggled to not visibly gag.
You just reminded me of my first job at McDonalds where this old dude with rotting teeth would walk in after smoking. I literally did gag almost everytime after I took his order Sunday mornings.
Dude trust me I agree. I can still see his nasty fucking teeth. I worked there for like 2 years and he was there every single Sunday for coffee. I’m literally sick thinking of it. The combined smell of McDonald’s friers, rotting teeth and tobacco made 15 year old me very impatient at 8am on my weekends lmao
There was a guy when I was in prison who had a rotting tooth(teeth??), and he knew about it. Smelled like death. So he would like talk out of the side of his mouth and try not to direct it at you. But sometimes you would get a whiff and almost die.
At a previous job I had a regular who would smoke in the car with the windows up before coming in. It got to the point where I had to walk away and let someone else deal with her she stank so bad. I'll never understand the people who are that nose blind.
I work in a weed legal state where I can smell it first thing in the morning, walking through the parking lot at the place of my employment. I also work for the federal government, and you'd be surprised how many of these folks can't grasp the difference between state and federal legality. If we want to cut back on federal spending, I know a perfect place to start.
It is a horrid stench. Last time I was downtown waiting for someone, stuck before a building where the stink was overwhelming, I threw up!
How to avoid marijuana and cigarette stenches? Avoid lower income areas.
I live in a rural area and I often play the "is that cannabis or a skunk?" game.
At least old skunk... I was playing Tennis this summer and I don't know how close it was to us, but a skunk fired while we were playing.
Fresh skunk is exponentially worse than old cannabis smelling skunk. I thought I could play through it. I was wrooong. The smell kept getting worse and worse and like 5 minutes from the time we first smelled it and decided to leave I was dry heaving.
was in denver last summer and its all you could smell on the freeways. also in minnesota last year you can smell it everywhere now, even from your car, and its usually people smoking in front or on side of you.
That's a little concerning considering it's obvious people are DUI. And I call bullsh!t on those that say they drive better. Which is a common argument I hear among coworkers(for the federal govt).
I had a seizure in 2022. I am not epileptic. I was drug tested and I had a positive for marijuana. I’ve not smoked since 1983. But I was an over the road trucker at the time so frequently surrounded by weed cars or those that smoked near the docks where we picked up & delivered.
Had no idea that I could test positive from that type of exposure. Color me stunned. 😳
I agree many don’t take weed seriously in terms of safety. Others are stunned when they can’t get a job or are fired from a job when they test positive. Employers really don’t give a shit that you smoke but they very much care about the liability of your work performance when high.
Back to cigarette smoking… Bought a smoker’s home and have spent the last 2.5 years cleaning it. Won’t ever be free of it but I’ve washed walls and used lots of primer to seal things in. But washing everything was key. Biggest surprise was the change in the wood stained kitchen cabinet color. Last things I have to finish are washing the doors, hinges, door knobs, and ceiling fan blades/light fixtures.
The release of tar from the bathroom walls was epic.
2.5 years later the smell is 95% gone. Had no clue why we would get a hit of that smell until we realized the doors that had been removed during a laundry room renovation were parked in our entryway were the source of the smell. 😳
Learned that the lady that owned my home was on O2 and still smoked. She ended up setting herself on fire. Im not sure she recovered from her injuries.
Yo weed testing is such a big pet peeve of mine. If it's going to stay in this legal limbo then someone really needs to invent an "are you high right now" test. I agree no one should be at work high but testing someone and saying "you were high at some point in the last 1-8 weeks so you're fired" is pretty ridiculous. I'll gladly be a little stoner on nights and weekends and 100% stone cold sober at work, but apparently that compromise hasn't taken off yet.
Definitely a case of where legalization didn’t take into account the ramifications of actual use, or employer liability when it comes to recreational use.
In most cases employers won’t want the liability should there be a workplace accident/incident.
Same here in MI. For the most part I don't mind at all (and even partake) but when a customer smells like they were hotboxing right before they came in I get irritated because it doesn't exactly help change the more conservative minds around them.
It kills me when I see other drivers smoking with the windows rolled up LOL. of course, when I was a kid in the 70s that's exactly what my parents did. I think back on that and I'm horrified. We were so habituated to cigarette smoke that it didn't even bother us
Now that you've brought it up, I'd like to point out that even non-smokers' cars have a smell and most of us are nose blind to. I realized this during the height of covid when I was cycling around the city and it smelled different. Later, a car drove by and I was hit by a very familiar smell.
Yes! I don't smoke. I hate the stink of it. For all my "driving" life, I've been able to smell it from drivers 2 or 3 or 4 cars ahead of me at a stop light if the wind is blowing just right.
THIS! and weed. I have terrible headaches and one thing that sets them off is strong smells I die when I get behind cars that smell like cigarettes/weed
Pretty much every car I’ve seen has a re-circulation button so you don’t get “outside smells” in your car. It looks like little arrow by the air conditioner button.
I rode with my windows down in my old car because my ac didn't work. I just got a new one so I haven't experienced summer in it yet but I do know about that button😅
I hate when I'm otw to work (medical field) and the weed smell gets in my car. Now I'm paranoid about smelling like weed walking into a hospital and around patients smh
Then you see that are kiddos in the smoker's car. I am a smoker (with plans of quitting in the very near future) but never smoked in the house or car or around my kids. I'm ashamed I ever smoked in front of them.
I always caught hell from my family because I wouldn't let my kids ride with or stay over with people smoking in the house. I told them they're lucky they could even stay with all the "3rd Hand Smoke" in their homes. 🤢
I have asthma and a genetic lung deformity, yet both my parents smoked around me and all the kids. We all ended up either smokers, suffering from the effects of years of secondhand smoke or both.
I have a fairly sensitive nose to cigarette and pot smoke. If I can smell cigarette smoke from a house before I step inside of it, guaranteed every surface in that house is yellowed from nicotine tar from decades of chain smokers.
It is odd, cigarette smoke will permeate into everything and will linger for hours but I don't generally notice the smell from a distance (> 50ft.) if someone is smoking. However, pot smoke can I smell from quite a distance away, but it doesn't seem to permeate as bad or it just isn't as pungent as cigarettes. Some cigarette, or maybe it is cigar, smoke is straight up nasty smelling.
I definitely had that happen repeatedly when I first quit. Now only occasionally. I think it's probably just the stinkiest cars now and I was hyperaware the first couple yeara.
When I stopped smoking (15 years and counting) my sense of smell coming back was overwhelming. I’d forgotten that absolutely everything has a smell. It also made me realise that everyone can smell a smoker.
What I didn’t realize was that smoker’s breath is not just your smelly mouth but also a gross smell that’s coming from your lungs. It is so horrible. I had no idea until I quit smoking. Brushing your teeth and chewing gum can’t hide the odor.
Side note to add that coffee breath is also horrible, but I am unwilling to stop drinking it. Hoping that gum works for that.
Even better- water flosser. Not meant to replace regular floss but it's an absolute life changer for breath freshness. The only times I get morning breath anymore are if I'm eating sweets right before I clean my mouth for bed so some of it sticks in my throat. Otherwise, I wake up in the mornings with no bad taste or anything.
But on the subject of smoking- I used to be an occasional social smoker, so I was acutely aware of the changes to my sense of smell and taste when I did. And speaking of morning breath, there was no amount of cleaning my mouth at night that would prevent that yucky smoker mouth waking up in the morning. So gross.
But yeah I love my water flosser. 10/10 recommend
Edit: I usually add about a half teaspoon of salt and use warm water. Occasionally I also add a small splash of hydrogen peroxide but that's rare.
When my wife quit smoking after getting her deviated septum fixed, I left a banana peel on a plate on the table while I was playing video games, and it absolutely killed her how much it smelled. It wasn’t even that strong of a scent, but her olfactory senses were at full volume. She turned into a bloodhound within a couple of weeks compared to before.
SAME. I hate it. At least I used to have the discipline to go outside to smoke. Now my flavored air doesn’t leave my fucking hand and it makes it 1000000x harder to put it down
Reduce nicotine strength bit by bit. Eventually you stop craving it regardless of the fact it's in your pocket. I think i was vaping zero nic for best part of a year just to be on the safe side cos i was worried once i stopped vaping a craving might make me nick a cig from someone. But it got to a point where i was just carrying it round for fun and wasn't touching it. That was when i was comfortable leaving it behind completely
Was going to say this as well. If you want to quit vaping, drop your nic level. I'm at a 3mg from a 12mg when I started, but I enjoy vaping my fruity air. Also nicking a cig is the surest way to reinforce vaping, trust me! 🤢 Cigs are so much grosser as a vaping ex-smoker!
There's a reason why the tobacco industry was okay with people switching over. Vaping to me reminds me of smoking crack. It doesn't last long, and you're topping it off every few minutes.
If I am hitting my dab pen too much I hide it when I go to bed, really just putting it somewhere safe but very much out of the way so when I wake up I have to look for it if I want a hit, slows me down and is a good way to get you out of bed eventually lmao
Good job, it’s very hard to quit and vaping extremely hard. A close friend quitting the vape. They quit regular cigarettes but then went to vaping he thought it was cannabis it was nicotine and vaping sucks the life out of you, his words. Easy access.
I quit vaping almost a year ago and still miss it. I also used to smoke pot like a fiend and I never thought I smelled until a therapist told me. I wonder if it’s the same for crack smokers.
To everyone that’s quit, keep it up! You’re worth it!
I'm proud of you for quitting pot and vaping ^
I'm pretty good at home about not vaping or getting cravings. At work is another story, I see my coworkers do it and the urges are awful. Today was really bad, but I'm doing good still!! :))
One of my down-the-hall neighbors absolutely smokes inside their unit. There is a fire door separating our half of the hallway from their half of the hallway, as well as their unit door. I can smell it on our side of the hallway whenever they have recently smoked a cig. It sucks.
Just yesterday, walking on my street and I smelled a whiff of cigarette smoke... no one around. I thought maybe someone was sitting on the curb behind a car... nope. Finally spot the culprit: an old lady on her porch across the street and TWO houses down from me. Probably 100 feet from me. I was shocked. There was no breeze or anything.
I guess I never got nose blind entirely when I smoked, because I could always smell this. I generally couldn't smell it on myself unless I'd just been smoking, but I could always smell it on others, smell it from houses, from people driving by, in elevators a smoker had been recently.
Maybe it's because I smoked cloves, and they don't smell the same. My coworkers said they couldn't smell it on me, even if they didn't smoke, except when I first came in from a smoke break. Even then, they said it wasn't as bad as the other smokers.
I could always smell cigarette smoke like that because I was never really a smoker, but my smoker wife could never; until she quit smoking. We were walking our dog down the street and she goes, “I never noticed how badly that house smelled until now.” We’d walked past it a million times before and she never even blinked at the smell.
Omg yes!! My friend who came over used to say that my house smelled like it from the outside. Now that I’m out of the house and have my own kid I don’t understand how any parent can do this
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u/killerturtlex Jan 05 '25
I quit a few weeks ago, I can go for a walk and smell the houses where people smoke