Did everything smell like cigarette smoke in the 1970s?

Public places. Homes of smokers.

Much like the stench of New York city streets in 1890 with all those damn horses,you were just so used to it you didnt notice it. Everybody smoked,everywhere you went. Funny you should mention this,I just had to get rid of a painting I had bought at a thrift store because no matter how I treated it,it reeked of 40 years of a 3 pack a day habit.

No one noticed because it was ubiquitous

U-b-i-q-u-i-t-o-u-s

Yes everything smelled bad. There were vending machines with cigarettes everywhere, too.

I remember the 80s and so many people smoked you just weren't really that aware of it.

Yes, and ashtrays were a thing!

Yes! and I remember Sunday mornings throwing up after a family gathering where everyone was smoking, the place was toxic as fuck!

I Know what ubiquitous means,dear. Im not a dummy. Like when I say men are struck blind by my beauty,I dont really mean it. They get their sight back in a day or two !

2/3 of all men smoked in the 1940s.

They were all much thinner then too.

I remember the transition period when restaurants still had smoking sections and that it was irritating as fuck to get seated near the smoking section. I can't believe what we used to put up with.

I always found it odd that Jews were as savagely anti-smoking as Hitler.

I still remember in the '90s being able to smoke at your desk at work and in the break room, in bars and restaurants, even in the hallways of buildings at college as you waited for class to begin. I even remember the day they removed the ashtrays that were mounted on the wall. Several classmates ranted, "Where the hell are we supposed to put out our cigarettes?"

Yes. And I miss it. Smokey bars and cocktails were an integral part of my young adulthood in the late 1970's and 1980's. And a part of some of the best times I ever had!

I worked in a school in the 90s and they'd just banned smoking in the staffroom, but provided staff with a very cosy cellar room which was actually a lot nicer than the staffroom. Plus, senior staff could still smoke in their offices, so everyone went down there to bunk off, basically.

Smoking was so glamorous then.

We used to smoke in class in college. Ashtrays were everywhere ! And boxes of cigarettes were put out at frat parties. Then, later on, all the bars and restaurants allowed smoking. It was a rite of passage on the journey to adulthood.

At my elementary school there was smoking in the teacher's staff room and in the office. I also remember that our Grade 6 teacher used to come out on the field to coach rugger and he'd have a cigarette in his mouth constantly. This was the late sixties.

Everything stank of cigarettes. Smoking in movies. Smoking in airplanes. Smoking in restaurants. Smoking in the work place. It was just fucking awful. Most every place had a blue cloud floating in it.

When you came home from a bar or club, you had to undress quickly and put everything you owned into the dryer and run it for 20 minutes. That helped enormously with the clothes. But you had to shower and shampoo your hair to get rid of the awful smell of cigarettes.

The smokers didn't care. They would light up anywhere with little to no concern for the difficulty it cost others.

Bite me, bitch. It was a glorious, festive time!

I loved when Donna Martin on 90210 asked the French Taxi Driver in Paris to put out his cigarette. He went off and rightly so.

What's really fucking crazy is that old dive bars still smell like smoke. I'm in California where smoking indoors at bars has been banned forever but the smell lives on.

Former smoker, here. I once flew from NYC to the West Coast, nonstop, and booked the smoking section so I could enjoy my "helpful companions" in uninterrupted leisure.

By the time I exited the plane, I was faint and nauseous (Mary!), as if I had been exposed to poisonous gas for six straight hours. I never lit up once.

It certainly did in the '80s.

All of my dance and theater teachers in the late 70s and early 80s smoked their brains out during classes. Flipping vinyl copies of the All That Jazz, The Wiz and The Muppet Movie and huffing away.

Smoking was the norm but homes were not that tight. Most of my friends smoked but none smoked more than two packs a day, so no, their houses did not smell bad.

There are many countries you could visit in the world to get a feeling of what it would have been like in the US back then, OP. One thing you understand very quickly upon traveling or living abroad is how relatively blessed we are in the US when it comes to exposure to secondhand smoke.

In the 1970s NYC smelled like a mix of cigarettes, poppers and Aramis.

Walk through any casino and you'll get a taste of what it was like.

People were allowed to smoke at work, if your throat was raw from a cold or bronchitis they didn't care they just kept smoking. It was vile. If you sprayed foam cleaner on your desk drawers dark brown sticky gunk just rolled down.

I worked with a married couple who were both heavy smokers, their son was allergic to smoke so he lived in his room. The husband said "We miss him so much".

I took what I think was the last British Airways flight - smoking flight I should say - from Johannesburg to London. My seat was in the Non-smoking section. But it made no difference. I distinctly remember entering the plane in South Africa and my nostrils stung from the acrid smell throughout the entire cabin. It literally felt like I was entering a bar after a heavy night partying the night before. It was beyond gross.

Imagine those flight attendants having put up with smoking on those long haul 12 hour international flights their entire careers. The noxious fumes.

Also what another poster said about bars in general. I remember as a teenager in the 70s coming home after a few hours in a bar and stripping off my clothes thinking I was at least getting rid of the cigarette smoke. Only to find my underwear stank as much as my clothes. My hair was disgusting too. I had to shower right away to try to get rid of some of the stench. And the clothes went into the wash. Not the dryer. The *washer**.

If you wore a sweater in a bar, you would regret it afterwards (this was the 90s).

I still smoke, a little under a pack a day. This, after I'd quit for 10 years, and now I've been a Marlboro Man since 2005.

I grew up in the 70's and 80's and remember just about everyone lighting up. I learned how to inhale at summer camp at age 12. But inhaling cigarettes used to make me extremely nauseous. I've since lost any and all delicate sensitivities, and have the resistance of Godzilla to cigs.

Second hand smoke used to also render me nauseous and a pale shade of green. It didn't exactly compliment my natural high yellow skin tone. My parents were smokers, and being from the Midwest, daily commutes to school would be inhaling second hand smoke, with the car windows raised, and the only ventilation reprieve being the air conditioning or heater.

Airplane trips were the worst. Nowhere to go at 30,000 feet, and certainly no fresh air coming in. I was blissfully desensitized and don't remember even giving it a second thought, but for the flight attendants and frequent flyers who were forced to inhale second hand smoke regularly. I shudder at the repercussions and toll it must have inflicted upon their health and well being. It's tantamount to working or living with asbestos, or mold. The unforseen consequences must have silently killed and shaved years off people's lives.

I'm a nurse and know all too well the ramifications of my actions. And yet I continue to smoke. I am mindful of affecting others with my toxic habit, and try my hardest to not inflict my tobacco issues upon them. They didn't ask for it, and don't deserve to be compromised. My O2 sats remain very high, and I'm not experiencing detectable respiratory complications, but I know better. Cigarettes are a silent assassin, killing me softly..

I came from a non-smoking family. Nobody in my family smoked, thank goodness.

In the 70s smoking was everywhere and you sort of got used to it. You really didn't notice it as much.

As someone upthread pointed out, restaurants began in the 1980s separating into smoking and non-smoking. I remember you ALWAYS had to wait for the non-smoking section but could be seated almost immediately in the smoking section. And in smaller restaurants, it barely made any difference. Your non-smoking booth could be right next to a smoking booth. And I think some restaurants had a "rolling" dividing line, when more non-smokers came in (Sunday afternoon after church) they extended the non-smoking section.

It was the same on planes. There was barely any difference. I was so happy when airlines banned smoking. But recently I was on a flight and some dumb bitch near me decided to paint her fingernails which smelled terrible, so there's still a long way to go with respecting other people in confined spaces.

My high school allowed smoking between classes. Still boggles me. I used to take a longer path to avoid the smoke.

In the 60s my family had a new TV delivered and installed. The installer made a big point of how nice it was to be in a home that did not smell of smoke.

Everywhere smelled like an ashtray, white walls turned yellow, if you went to a club your clothing had to be fumigated.

I lived on the third floor in my freshman dorm aka the smoking floor. I wasn't a huge smoker, but they were partiers and more fun.

My dad was a smoker. when I look at my family photos he would almost always be seen with a lit cigarette. I recall smoking was everywhere in business offices, you couldn't get away from it. In restaurant, bars, theaters (they had smoking sections on the left and right side sections and balcony). Anytime I went to a club to see a concert I would come home with clothes and hair stinking of smoke. I'm glad it's become restricted today. What still bothers me is pot smoke. The smell is so much stronger and pervasive that cigarette smoke ever was. I had trouble with a tenant who would smoke joints and the people on the floor below would be be smelling the pot. He made their life hell. They finally started calling the police on him. He was arrested twice and finally moved out. Now I have a no marijuana clause in any new leases.

"But recently I was on a flight and some dumb bitch near me decided to paint her fingernails which smelled terrible, so there's still a long way to go with respecting other people in confined spaces."

You could start by not calling her 'some dumb bitch.'

It was ghastly. Just ghastly.

My dry cleaning bills were out of sight in the 1980s and early 1990s when smoking was allowed everywhere: the office, the clubs, bars, almost everyone's home, etc.

Yes, but somehow you didn't really notice it.

"You could start by not calling her 'some dumb bitch.'"

No, she could have started by not being a dumb bitch and painting her nails on a plane. What a fucking cunt.

Respect. Datalounge style!

I did not notice the smell of smoke, as I smoked every single day of the 1970s. I did notice its effects when I took pictures down from walls every time I moved, however.

I guess we may have got used to it but yes, it was cigarettes everywhere.

In the 1980s we had a family doctor - a guy from India - and he would smoke cigarettes in the hospital corridors, not bother to go outside. I think later he might have got cancer and he euthanased himself.

Now if you're around a hospital and want to smoke you have to get far away from the main building or else. I hardly ever smoke though - just very occasionally. Very lucky I didn't get hooked on them. It seems so difficult most of the time to quit even when someone has started experiencing serious health issues and they should have incentive to quit.

Best thing not to start in the first place. The smell is terrible, they cost far too much, age you quickly etc. Some people who may be lucky seem able to keep smoking a long time and live to ripe old age, but I think that heavy smoking can easily take a good ten years off your life.

It was also a time when people used the ashtrays in their cars and filled them up with the butts and ashes, some time in the late 80's ashtrays where kept pristine and became reserved for change or bottle caps and the butts when right out the window.

What a bunch of drama queens. You came home from a bar smelling like smoke. I washed my clothes, I washed my hair, same thing I did every day anyway. I wasn't even a smoker and I did not live with a smoker. I miss those days, probably because I was young and having a great time.

Everything reeked.

I don't know where people lived that they were allowed to smoke in theaters or in school. Smoking was not allowed in school, you went outside for your lunch break and smoked...we were never allowed to smoke and I am old.

Yes, it did

people also smoked in grocery stores and then put them out on the floor and left them there. someone would eventually come by and sweep them up.

It smelled of patchouli and weed, and I wasn't even around then.

I was a kid in the 70's with parents & grandparents who smoked. I remember riding in our cars with the windows rolled up and smoke billowing around us. I was fascinated with the twisty-turny patterns of smoke as they drifted into the air. Ironically, those spirals of smoke probably caused my asthma. Fortunately, my parents quit smoking when I was in high school. I've wondered if in hindsight they regret exposing us kids to so much second-hand smoke.

Both my parents died of smoking and now my siblings all feel the effects from second-hand smoke - one has emphysema and the other two are battling lung cancer. They all worked in and era when smoking was allowed in the workplace. I'm nearly a generation younger than them. Fingers crossed.

I have numerous relatives who died from smoking related illnesses. My great uncle of esophagus and stomach cancer, my father from emphysema, my uncle from throat cancer, one cousin from mouth cancer, another cousin from heart attack resulting from a advanced lung disease, and an aunt from lung cancer.

We still smoke because we know it does not cause the man made inventia called "cancer"!

r54 I am sure they do. I have often felt regret that I didn't know & exposed my kids

I remember planes had smoking sections, usually in the back of the plane. I would go into the lavatory and get stoned.

I remember my extremely smug attitude when I replied with a gasp: " No smoking please!" when asked by a reservations clerk what section I preferred in the airplane. I had quit smoking for about two weeks at the time.

It lasted for about 10 years and one day I asked myself : "What could it hurt to have a smoke or two?" It took me another 10 years to finally quit for good. I loved smoking in the smoking years.

[quote]I don't know where people lived that they were allowed to smoke in theaters or in school.

In NY, LA, and SF for movie theatres ('60-'80s).

College in PA and DC (1970s).

R57 suffers from stupidia and idiocia.

The problem with airplanes is the gook from the cigarettes used to provide the final seal of the fuselage. They had to use more glue after smoking stopped.

The other problem is once smoking was banned from airplanes, they reduced the air replacement circulation for 12 times and hour to once every twenty minutes. So there was no more smoke, but the air on planes is now thick with bacteria and viruses in the old, practically used up, air.

r63, wow that is disgusting. No wonder I feel so dirty when I get off a plane.

R63 This is why I hold my breath for the duration of each flight.

Late '70s I worked at Houlihan's Old Place and there were eight dining sections. ONE section was non-smoking, in between two of the smoking sections.

The hostess would always asked the newly arriving dining party "Smoking or non?"

THE TRUTH ABOUT CABIN AIR

Filthy, germ-laden, rotten, disgusting, wretched, skanky, rancid, putrid, fetid, and fart-filled are just a few of the adjectives used to describe cabin air, and legion are the accounts of flyers allegedly made ill by microscopic pathogens circulating throughout a plane. In reality, the air is very clean.

Nobody was allergic to cigarette smoke in those days because it was everywhere.

High schools had a senior smoking lounge. Ours was outdoors. In college, the desks in auditoriums had built in ashtrays. Teachers asked smokers to sit in the back of the room by the late 70s. In the 80s, you couldn't smoke in classrooms anymore, but you could smoke in the hallway. Every class that was 90 minutes long had a mid-class break and smokers would light up in the hallway. Eventually you had to go outside to smoke, but then they did away with break time and ended class 5 minutes early

My father was a chain smoker. After he went to bed there was still a blue cloud hanging in the middle of the room for a few hours.

I remember when I first moved to NYC I still smoked and I lit up in a subway tunnel one night. A man chastised me and I thought he was joking. There was smoke, shit, piss, mice, rats, bums and half eaten food lying on the ground everywhere and he was seriously thinking it was healthy until I lit up? And a woman with a baby carriage once made a big show of walking into the street in order to cross over because a man was smoking near her. She made such a fuss that there were about 50 people at a bus stop watching her when she walked right behind a bus that belted a cloud of smoke right into the baby carriage.

In hospitals we had to go room to room, looking for a non smoking patient whenever we had to admit a new patient who was on oxygen. They finally banned smoking in patient rooms but we had solariums, which were basically waiting rooms where people could smoke. Patients would walk to the solarium with their IV poles, carrying their Foley catheters so they could smoke. I remember walking past the solarium one night and the patients were in there along with nurses who were writing in charts. All were smoking and watching Dynasty.

Night shift nurses sat at the nursing station desks smoking and drinking coffee all night long. I knew a middle aged nurse who was on heart medication. When she left the night shift, she didn't need to be on heart medication anymore because she could no longer sit around smoking and drinking caffeine for 10 hours.

We had a neurosurgeon who used to walk around the hospital smoking in the hallways. When he walked into neuro ICU, he would flick his lit cigarette into the wastebasket at the nurses station. Nurses would scramble to find it and put it out. All the patients in the ICU were on oxygen.

YES it did

I love those days.

Other than the allergy to smoke claim, r29.is right on -- people aren't allergic to smoke, but it can cause nonallergic rhinitis which is the same symptoms as allergies but allergy pills won't help which sucks.

I also stayed upstairs away from my smoker parents, but they were assholes and frequently forced me to stop doing homework and sit in a smoky living room watching stupid TV with them. I developed serious respiratory issues that continue to this day.

The airplane filters mentioned in r67 are 99% efficent when they are first installed, but what are they after 50% life? 75%? End of Life?

Not 99% I would bet.

I heart you, R71, even if your smoker parents didn't.

Everything about the 70s stank. Sleaziest decade ever.

I have never smoked, but everyone in my family did, both parents and my brother and I just suffered and God I hated it so bad. Even in grade school other kids would ask if I smoked because the smell was so thick on me growing up. With a cigarette sitting in an ashtray the smoke would drift towards me regardless of where I would sit. Going somewhere in a car, both parents would lit up at the same time and if I cracked a window to get some fresh air I would get yelled at.

I couldn't wait to go to college and get away from it. Arrived at college with an assigned roommate and of course he smoked, fortunately he flunked out first term and I have never lived with another smoker since. Father smoked until he got emphysema and died, mother continued to smoke through my fathers emphysema until her death ten years later. Her smoking limited my contact with her because a visit to her meant I would smell like a dirty ashtray. In winter I had a winter coat set aside to wear to her place because everything I wore would stink.

I know some of you are in love with smoking but your clothes, vehicle, house and breath smells like shit, you don't smell it the same way that a person with bad breath doesn't smell it, they are use to it.

I remember visiting my grandparents in the 1980s. They were in their 80s and smoked like fiends. They lived in a nice home in a nice suburb but the moment you walked through that front door the most horrid stink would fill your nostrils. I once did the "sniff test" while they weren't looking and the stench was everywhere especially the curtains. Which I figured were hardly ever washed - being elderly and such.

One day I was visiting for lunch and it was all I could to eat in that place. It was just so disgusting, and dirty feeling.

R27: In the 1970s NYC smelled like a mix of cigarettes, poppers and Aramis.

You forgot the pungent urine smell throughout Midtown.

The absolute worst was a house with smokers and a humidifier. When I first went to my in-laws house I thought they had brown striped flocked wallpaper. Nope. Their walls were painted and the brown "stripes" were from nicotine that had run down the walls due to a humidifier they used all winter. To be fair, the oldsters didn't smoke; their mentally ill son did. They also had an "air filter" that just collected dust and spewed it back out again.

After my Aunt died in 1990, we went in and cleaned out her place for sale. Her 3-pack-a-day smoker husband died in 1975. She didn't smoke, yet after 15 years there was still a 2-3 foot black soot ring around the ceiling of every room. He died of emphysema and she of lung cancer.

I know that wasn't meant to be funny r78 but you had me laughing as I imagined the humid moist air interacting with the acrid smoke resulting in the drip drip of that foul-smelling yellow-tinged sludge.

No one has yet spun a tale of themselves or others waking up first thing in the morning and reaching over to the night table for that tasty cig. Before the pee, before brushing teeth, etc. First coffin stick of the day. The real tobacco warriors.

Older generations initially didn't have the benefit of understanding the extent of how hazardous smoking was to their health. But at least by the 1970s everybody knew. So people who started smoking in the 1980s and later were just deluding themselves.

We've been on a downward spiral since the 1950s at least, R74. There's NO WAY that the 70s were worse than every successive decade since they ended.

I'm guessing that you weren't even around then, no?

OP: you'd really need to go back before the 70s-to the 40s or the 50s. The Surgeon General's report came out in the early 60s, and by the 70s there were already efforts underway to limit smoking.in enclosed public areas. But yes, I realize that most of the old bags here (myself included) remember that decade best.

I sympathize with non-smokers that through whatever circumstance were forced to endure the habit, but some of you..one wonders how you drag yourselves out the door each day. I mean to say, you hang out in dens of vice and expect a healthy environment? I'm reminded of the time a friend and myself were the only two people in a local hang-out, having our weekly TGIF cocktails and smokes. The cocktail waitress, as they always do (to make less work for themselves), plunks this 30ish couple right next to us in this empty, cavernous lounge. They look at us and the woman says, as she plops her infant on the table (ahem), "They're both smoking !". My buddy and I looked at each other, incredulous-just as he was about to give this bitch his two bit's worth, the waitress scooped up their drinks and brought them to the other side of the building. I mean, a BABY! In a bar! Oh fuck them!

I don't like smoking at the dinner table, and I'm glad to forego the habit in a restaurant, but every recent meal out I've had has seen my levels of irritation rise with cloning hordes of smart-phone idiots/foodies, unruly brats and oversize, loud groups of partiers. I eagerly await the day I won't have to put up with all of THOSE things, but I'm not holding my breath.

I miss smoking!

You still smoke, R82?

Ed Norton: Ralph, mind if I smoke? Ralph Kramden: I don't care if you burn.

R83 Me too, but only when I read threads about smoking.

My grandmother died in 1972. Looked like a clean-cut case of stroke. She had one before her death. The doc was lousy. No autopsy. There was surprise my sister was the beneficiary of a large (we never knew how large) insurance policy. But she had been taking care of the old woman for several months.

Then she let something slip when she was drunk three years ago. Something like she wished she had another grandmother to take care of because the money was running out. Turned out she not only made a high six-figure haul, but she had cleaned things out pretty well before the "stroke."

So I used my connections at the DA's office to check into things. They hate cold cases but I said tough shit. She was my grandmother.

Finally, this April - April 16 - they finally disinterred the old woman. I was there. They decided not to take the coffin in so they had a tent up and did a switch to a body bag and one of those temporary plastic boxes they're using now. Grandma in Tupperware. She'd have liked that.

But when the moment came to open things up I stood at the edge of the tent. Crack, snap. And the lid went up, a little crooked. I was behind it because I didn't need that first look. And all I heard was, "Shit!" about half a second before the smell hit me.

Tareytons. The corpse of the old girl smelled - reeked - of all those cartons of cigarettes she had smoked to earn that first smoke. You could almost see the blue smoke hang in the tent before it dissipated. We were all high from that stinking tobacco funk of 1970s casket death.

And they arrested my sister last week. She smokes. Salems.

I hope they kill her.

What?

Great story, R87.

I can't remember really the 1970s but I do remember that up until a decade or so ago in Europe, when banning smoking in public buildings, bars, clubs, etc. started to become law that if you went to the pub or a bar or even a restaurant your clothes would reek of cigarette smoke when you got home, even if neither you nor the people you had been with smoked.

I also remember up until some time in the 90s, I believe, that you could smoke on planes and smokers would sit in the back half of the plane. As if the stench and pollution wouldn't travel to the front half in that tiny space, with no safety considerations (like, if someone dropped a lit match or a lit cigarette butt) and no security considerations (cigarettes and especially lighters/matches would be considered potential terrorist weapons today).

What I find interesting is that a century or so ago - when smoking, tobacco and cigarettes, etc. were just becoming widespread in the west - they were fully aware of how this habit stank the place out and so would have smoking rooms, smoking jackets, smoking caps (presumably to stop your hair from smelling).

The amount of second hand smoke I inhaled when I was going to bars back in college in the 90s actually angers and scares me in retrospect.

I quit smoking in 1996, after 15 years. I still miss the smell of a freshly struck match as it touches the paper of a well-packed cigarette. Mmmmm.

I have stress-induced asthma now, no doubt from my terrible habit.

My mother-in-law died of the lung cancer non-smokers get. It's a lot more deadly than the lung cancer smokers get.

I remember all the anti-smoking crusaders who usually raised a fuss started joining the smokers in the back of the plane after the 1985 Dallas crash where only the smokers in the back survived.

Then they started campaigning for the smokers to be in front so the sainted, healthy, non-smokers could have the safe back seats, but smoking was banned from all seats soon after.

I holidayed in Turkey recently and it was exactly the same as the UK in the early 80s - smoking everywhere, all the restaurants and bars, in the streets, everywhere.

I remember as a kid my dentist AND a barber who would in the middle of working on my teeth or cutting my hair stop for a quick ciggie break. True story.

I'm sure it did, most everyone smoked, and those who didn't became so used to it that they didn't much notice it. I smoked like a chimney back then. Even in corporate offices, most everybody had an ashtray on their desk. Wild.

I'm just 37 and still have very fond memories of sneaking into bars when I was underage and getting to enjoy smoking indoors.

My pack a day habit was handed down from my parents - Mom smoked constantly at home, long skinny cigarettes that came in elegant boxes. She looked so glamorous to me when I was a child... huge blonde hair like Catherine Deneuve, fiddling with her clunky diamond ring while absentmindedly smoking during phone calls. I would watch her on the sofa instead of the cartoons on the tv and I would wish I was a dizzy beauty like her instead of a little pudgy boy.

I grew into myself and grew into my body and grew a beard, but I didn't let go of the smoking until I was nearly 35.

Texas was late to ban anything and always extra permissive. Our dinner club had an indoor smoking bar long after all of the bans went into place.

Pneumonia and constant bronchitis made me leave my smokes for good, but I miss it. That first hangover smoke in the morning was a treasured rush and not something you can recapture any other way...

In the days of smoking at work everything was a bit more relaxed. People would sit and smoke and chat and everyone left on time. Work places would close down at 5pm.

Darn you all!

The earlier one quits smoking the better chance they have of avoiding a serious disease later on in life such as emphysema or cancer.

It's never too late to quit -- when I gave up cigarettes and soda, my BP dropped from 149/83 to 111/64.

After 40 years....

R101 Wow, that's an amazing change. See how excessive nicotine and sugar can mess with your vitals.

I smoked and drank diet soda and my BP was always 90/60 R101. I gave up smoking almost 3 years ago. I realize I've already done the damage and hope that I miss a bullet on this one.

r101 here: since I did it in two phases -- first I gave up soda, and then six months later I gave up cigarettes -- I noticed something interesting: sugar affected my upper number and cigarettes affected my lower number.

So, in the first phase, the top number dropped from 149 to 111, and in the second phase the bottom number dropped from 83 to 64 (in increments)

[quote]and my nostrils stung from the acrid smell throughout the entire cabin...

MARY!

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Like human-activity-induced global warming, claims of the bad health effects of smoking cigarettes is a conspiracy of the left-wing mainstream media to tear down the God-given rights of true Americans. And don't get me started on my 2nd Amendment.

Last year I got on a plane in Atlanta. It was a very hot day and the plane had just arrived from NYC. They had the air conditioning running and the cabin was filled with smoke (vapor). It reminded me of a 1970s disco.

[quote]Pneumonia and constant bronchitis

In your early 30s. Damn, man.

No one was allergic to cigarette smoke then because you can't be allergic to cigarette smoke. It can irritate your lung, cause asthma attacks but you will never have an allergic reaction to it.

I's an irritant (among other things) not an allergen.

Totally true what was said upthread about nurses smoking at the nurses station and doctors doing their rounds with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. One of our evening respiratory therapists was a chain smoker who had one of those clanking horrible coughs- he wound up with COPD. A respiratory therapist!

"That first hangover smoke in the morning was a treasured rush and not something you can recapture any other way..."

I forgot about that. Quit for good finally 13 years ago, but it was fun while it lasted. I'm sure we'll find out soon that vaping or weed is awful for us too. But I'm going to smoke the shit out of it until I hear proof.

There were ashtrays with sliding covers on coach buses, built into the arm of the seats. I remember my Dr. with a cig hanging from his lips in the hallway of his office. And those iron cast beasts that sat on the floor with an aluminum flower pot looking thing for cigs. Always full.

I would still be smoking if it were not unhealthy and expensive. I can smell cigarette smoke a mile away. OK, exaggerating, but I can smell it before I see the person smoking. Don't even get me started on smelling smoke from a car driver. I really wish smokers would smell what non smokers smell.

My mother smoked when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s.

Washing an ashtray brings a unique smell. It's gag inducing.

My grandma would make baked goods and bring them over, and since she also smoked, they tasted smoky. We would throw them out the second she left. It was as though her Saran Wrap was coated in nicotine.

My high school has a smoking area until 1990. Your parents wrote a note and you could smoke between classes. This was a middle-class suburban school. Teachers smoked along side of us.

The smell from going out partying never bothered me, but sitting in a smoker's car makes me want to throw up to this day.

Even when I was young I recall being aware of how cigarette ads manipulated people. Especially about women smoking.

.

You've come a long way, baby.....

I'm the watered-down euphemism for pervert coming after the LGBT center, whose name I shall gobble up and replace.

Lol ^ wrong thread!

More cocaine than cigarettes. That might have been my nose, though.

It was awful! The bars and dance clubs were full of smokers and my eyes would burn due to the heavy ciggie smoke and my clothes and hair would smell like smoke. I was not/am not a smoker so I hope being exposed to that 2nd hand smoke was not harmful. Nowadays, you can't smoke anywhere but when someone is smoking it smells so horrible. And at $4 to 5.00 a pack (and more in some places) you have to have a rather lofty income to smoke today and still enjoy living in a nice house, driving a nice vehicle, wearing good clothing and traveling.

I went to high school in Austin Texas in the late 70s and students were allowed to smoke in outdoor designated areas. Hard to fathom now.

[quote]There were ashtrays with sliding covers on coach buses, built into the arm of the seats.

Many cars had this as well. In the 1970s we had an LTD Brougham that had ashtrays even in the back seats. The ashtray cover was on a spring and on long car trips, I'd get bored and sit there and flick the cover up and down. And a few times, I pinched my finger on the back part of it.

I remember clubbing and going to bars in the early 90s and everything reaked of smoke then. So I'm guessing the 70s would have been the same.

Yes, rental cars and hotel rooms often reeked of stale cigarette smoke. I used to go with my dad (who didn't smoke) to his bowling league just to hang out. I would come home putrid with the smell of cigarettes on my clothes, skin, hair—everything. I would have to take a shower and shampoo not to smell like an old ashtray. Things were so much worse those days. And smokers are so fucking oblivious to how raunchy they smell.

My parents were both smokers. Me and my sister hated it and would complain bitterly .

When I was in third grade I asked my mom if I could hide her cigarettes before I went to school every day. (Mom didn't work). I was dumb and young and didn't realize it didn't matter where I hid them she would find them or go get more. One day I put them in my backpack and took them to school. That was the end of that deal.

It was embarrassing having people at school tell me I smelled like smoke .and I had constant sore throats until I no longer lived with them .

I loved my parents. They were good people. They were from the generation where everyone smoked and didn't know how bad it was. But my mom died at 52 (ovarian cancer , not smoking related) and dad died at 59 . He had emphysema , bad circulation and a very bad heart. He had one of his lower legs amputated and died a few months later from sepsis.

Me and my sister both never touched a cigarette. I won't date a man who smokes. I don't wanna watch someone I love again go through what my dad went through .

"...those who didn't became so used to it that they didn't much notice it."

Did you not read any of the posts in this thread, R96?

Cigarettes are $10.76 a pack for many brands here in CA- new tax went into effect 4/1. And Laguna Beach is banning smoking everyplace but your house or car. No public smoking, indoors or out. Bars and the vape crowd are pissed.

When I was in visiting China, smoking was very common and smoking was allowed in doors. It was an interesting experience of what that would have been like.

Fuck "the vape crowd." Fuck them with their silly-looking smokesticks. They look as stupid as they are.

The clothes of smokers smelt like cigarette smoke.

You can still identify a smoker's house. There's one down the road from me and I can smell it from the middle of the road.

The more I read this thread the more worried I get about the second-hand smoke I inhaled. I forgot about all of the stinky hotel rooms I stayed in growing up, the nights I spent at my smoking relative's house, as well as my best friend's with the mom who smoked.

I try to be a good person, but whenever I walk past a smoker, or have to stand next to them in line, I honestly have the urge to blurt out, "Do you really not realize how BAD you smell?!"

And yet, hasn't america's life expectancy dropped for the first time in several generations? I find this interesting. Is it because we're fatter?

Yep r133, all the drama about cigs, but in reality obesity/the abundance of sugar in our diets have made us a more unhealthy population.

The 4/1 CA cigarette tax is just a jewish money grab.

r121 $8.00 plus tax on the average in NJ. I see the worst dressed people smoking, and I think "You could be spending that $250 (approx.) a month on clothes."

I'm fascinated by threads about other eras. I want one that discusses other aspects of the 70s (food, shopping, school, recreation, etc). I'm a dork, I know.

I remember taking smoke breaks with my professor in college, she'd stop class and everyone would hang out in the hallway chatting. There was also a whole floor of the library that was a smoking floor, and smoking lounges on the other ones. This was in the 80's, which was still the time of smoking sections on flights. I had a friend who always wanted to sit in smoking because it was basically a cocktail party in the back. More recently I remember stripping naked in my basement after a night out, putting everything in the washer, and taking a shower before bed. If you didn't shower your pillow would smell like smoke the next day, and your hair would reek of smoke when you finally did take a shower. It was gross.

Scary Marys! and prissy missy's.

Omg...I can smell a cigarette from down the street. lol. You dumb bitches have too much idle time to clutch your pearls and peek into your neighbors' windows.

Most of you sex starved, dried up cunts would blow a big dick, as he blew smoke rings up your prolapsed asses.

AIKC will lose his sense of smell entirely on his way to senile dementia. Sad.

R8 be very, very careful dear one.

I never realized how bad I smelled from living in a smoker household (at one point there were four smokers living at our house) until I went away to college. I'd unpack my laundry and I could smell the smoke and my roommate would always comment. And this was around 1990-1992 and I definitely remember coming back from the nightclubs and bars stinking, and I've never touched a cigarette. I hope I don't suffer in my old age from the effects of second hand smoke, it would be so unfair because I've never smoked and never had a desire to.

I still miss going to a bar and sitting on a stool as I opened a fresh pack of smokes that I bought from the vending machine that also gave me a nice pack of matches to fire them up. I would order a nice big glass of ice cold tap beer as I tore off that slim piece of cellophane that held the top on and crumble up that top and the strip and put them in the bar ash tray. Peeling back one side of that top aluminum foil and letting the little soldiers peep up at me as I pounded the open pack against my palm that allowed one of them to pop out and be ready for the plucking.

That first drag along with the first sip of that cold beer was paradise then.

Both habits are long gone now, but I remember....

"The little soldiers." OMFG.

r63 that makes sense about the air not being recycled enough. I always feel grimy and grungy after a flight, and I shower as soon as I can.

I remember I went to 'cool school' in Oxford, England in 1980 and we could smoke in class.

And we all did!

age range 16-18.

[quote]You can still identify a smoker's house. There's one down the road from me and I can smell it from the middle of the road.

Nonsense.

[quote]The more I read this thread the more worried I get about the second-hand smoke I inhaled. I forgot about all of the stinky hotel rooms I stayed in growing up, the nights I spent at my smoking relative's house, as well as my best friend's with the mom who smoked.

God, you sound like a prisspot.

[quote]I try to be a good person,

Try harder.

[quote] but whenever I walk past a smoker, or have to stand next to them in line, I honestly have the urge to blurt out, "Do you really not realize how BAD you smell?!"

It's probably YOU.

R147 = triggered and has stated her boundaries.

Maybe I'm missing something, but what exactly did r87's sister do that was illegal?

Well R147, as a kid I watched my grandmother battle lung cancer, which spread to other parts of her body, so yeah, I guess I AM a prisspot about smoking.

We're coming to take you away, R147.

I think most people nowadays will sit outside their homes and smoke, or blow it out their windows. But for those who Dutch oven themselves in their houses and cars, yeah, you can definitely smell it when you walk by. And I don't know how they stand it, their eyes must be constantly dry or stinging, but of course they're just used to it.

R129 - Until recently, I lived in a condo a few doors down from a multi-generational family from China. There must have been 8 to 10 adults living in the house. They all smoked like chimneys, packed onto the front porch, taking long, repeated drags off of cigarettes like they wanted to get as much intensity as possible, then letting out tremendously long plumes of smoke. All coughed constantly. It was disgusting.

Smoking was allowed and common inside radio and TV control rooms through about 1980...DJs were often heavy smokers (and users of cocaine). Breathing was optional in the worst of these places.

This was especially hard on equipment like control boards and cart machines. Add in frequent food and drink spills and I spent about half my time as a young engineer decontaminating circuit boards, replacing slide pots and scraping nicotine deposits off the tape heads. Thank Jeezus the worthless fucks got replaced by servers and automation systems.

I started smoking in 1976, at the age of 23 because second-hand smoke in the bars bothered me. I stupidly thought "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". Quit 18 months ago. Miss those fuckers every day.

True R18, it was not that long ago that smoking was allowed in bars/pubs, in restaurants, on planes, trains, in restaurants, in offices, hotel rooms, in hospitals, etc. I also remember when you were allowed to smoke outdoors in highschool. I just mainly smoked pot and hash. I tried smoking the way most people my age did; but I just smoked maybe 5 cigars at the most, and not even two packs of cigarettes.

I loved smoking, loved the smoky atmosphere, but nobody liked the health damage. Oh well, that was history.

Not everything. My dad smoked, my mom didn’t. When we came back from visiting him on the weekends, my mother would say “Ugh, you smell like ashtrays! Put those clothes right into the washing machine!”

I remember smoking when I taught classes....I'd use an empty Coke can as an ashtray. Classy.

I really learned to smoke at my boarding school n England in the 70s. There were unpleasant punishments if you were caught, but our whole days were built around the various "safe" places to go at different times of the day. Us smokers/rebels hung out together. We also would get drunk sometimes and play truant - going into London "illegally".

People who didn't break the rules, who toed the line were called "cabbages".

I never saw any drugs (pot) there. That was instant expulsion.

My friends in New York who went to private schools didn't really smoke cigarettes. But they were serious pot smokers. That was MAJOR fun for me. And funny for them because my head would explode. They had 4ft long bongs and shit.

I guess, but I don't recall it being such a big deal.

People were meaner back then, but they were not such miserably annoying bitches about everything.

I hope R39 dies. We’re full up on Fraus, you dumb bitch. Leave.

OP, you're so lucky to not have to go through cigarettes. They were everywhere, literally. People used to smoke in class when I was in college in the mid-70s. Restaurants had ashtrays on every table, and a cigarette machine near the entrance. We all thought it was so progressive when restaurants started having no-smoking sections, and then much later, smoking sections. (My mom used to huff that having a smoking section in a restaurant was like having a peeing section in a pool.) You could smoke on airlines, and in offices, which was really a nightmare since you were there 7 or 8 hours a day. Your clothes reeked, your hair reeked, and if you smoked, YOU reeked...the nicotine would literally come out your pores.

Now joints are an entirely different subject :)

Anti-smoking is such a Frau thing. Alcohol is way worse than cigarettes. If some of the Fraus would trade a glass of Pinot for a Parliment, maybe they wouldn’t be such fat miserable cunts.

I get smoking indoors is gross, but to act like if you even sniff it for a second you’ll die, bitch please. There are a lot of bitchy queens who act all snooty about cigs then will go willy-nilly eat some stranger’s asshole.

People who smoke are always cooler and more fun than non-smokers. It’s a brain chemistry thing. The American idea of living forever is behind this whole nitpicking crusade. We’d honestly be better off if a lot more people died early and it doesn’t look like life over the few decades is going to be so great, so light up!

[quote]Alcohol is way worse than cigarettes.

Perhaps for you. I'd much rather sit a table away from someone drinking than someone smoking.

Yes, taxis, subways, buses and trains. And passenger jets. I worked in journalism and it seemed anywhere I had a job I was confronted by chain smokers. And some friends smoked, so the ashtrays in their cars were always full. When friends of my parents came to the house for parties, the living and dining rooms quickly filled with smoke. And the next day the house always smelled of stale beer and old cigarettes. Movie theaters, too, were a problem.

OP, Just get a passport and fly out to France or Italy. Everybody smokes.

[quote]Alcohol is way worse than cigarettes

Your OPINION aside, drinking is a choice you make for yourself and yourself alone. You could sit in a bar and drink yourself blind, but someone sitting next to you isn't getting drunk along with you unless they want to. If you're sitting next to someone and you smoke, they're smoking too whether they want to or not. You're making that choice for them.

I think this is one of those questions like how did people stand to fuck each other before plumbing. If everyone is stinking, you don't notice it. Even though I was a young kid in the 70s, smoking was everywhere and you just never thought about it and it didn't smell strange. It wasn't until they started banning indoor smoking in the 80s in certain places that you could really tell the difference.

I wish I’d been alive back then. I would have smoked all the damn live long day.

[quote]People who smoke are always cooler and more fun than non-smokers.

Yes, sooo cool, sooo much fun.

I remember riding in the car with my parents smoking. I would bury my head in the back seat and breath through the holes where the buckles came out.

That being said, I never had the problems with smokers that a lot of people did when things got more restrictive. I found them more fun and laid back. But i Have never smoked save fire when I bum one at a bar to look cool.

My Dad smoked King Edward Imperial Cigars constantly (about 20 a day). If you were on a flight with him was like a London 'Pea Souper' fog. I think they only banned cigars on planes a few years before they stopped cigarettes.

I was a kid growing up in the 60's with two parents who smoked almost constantly. If we went anywhere they would both get in the car and light up, if I rolled down a window just a crack to get some fresh air I got yelled at. Kids in school would ask if I smoked because I smelled of smoke so badly. I couldn't wait to leave home and get away from it. When I got to college, my assigned dorm roommate smoked, fortunately he flunked out first semester. Who knew you couldn't pass classes if you didn't go to them.

Later in life my father got emphysema, had to quit and was on oxygen but my mother continued to smoke in the house in front of him. He told me that now he knew how I felt when they smoked in front of me and he half assed apologized for making it hard for me to breath. He said he just figured I was being jerk complaining about it. Thing is I didn't complain, I just wanted to roll down a window for fresh air.

How'd you guess??

I'm 55 yrs old. I was about 20 years old before I knew what cigarette smoke smell was. I moved out on my own and went to a bar. I did my laundry the next day and could smell the smoke on my clothes from the night before.

Everyone's parents smoked. In a lot of my childhood pictures you see people smoking and you can see packs/cartons of cigarettes in the background. My first job was in a grocery store cigarette dept in 1987. Everyone got paid on Friday and bought a carton of cigarettes, two if it was a married couple

R176 They didn't smoke much then?, I smoke 2 cartons a week on my own. My husband smokes 3+ cartons.

R169 Yeah you can smell the Sweat and Body Odour more now, I preferred the dusky smell of tobacco smoke.

Everyone smoked back then but what stuck in my sensory memory is high school always smelled like pot smoke. The bathroom served as smoking lounge for the students and it always reeked of marijuana. I tried smoking because I thought it would make me look cool but was too afraid of cancer to inhale. My uncle is a heavy smoker. His house has a particular fetid aroma that many smokers’ homes have. It didn’t exactly smell like cigarettes. I would describe it as a funky layer of old cooking grease and dirty clothes topped with stale cigarette smoke.

It was disgusting. So glad its over, and I was a smoker. We smelled like shit, had terrible breath, aged faster, got sick constantly, coughed up something that looked like dead slugs all the time. We woke up next to a full ashtray and, of course, the smell was revolting but we were so hooked on the damn things many of us would light up before our first cup of coffee. We felt glamorous because our brains had been pounded with images of glamorous movie stars smoking in especially lit conditions. We thought we were in those movies and we were just killing ourselves, slaves of the tobacco industry.

I worked in a TV newsroom in the early 80s that was populated by a lot of veteran male reporters. Several smoked, including one guy who sat right next to me. He always smelled like an ashtray, so I tried my best to keep my distance.

"Did everything smell like cigarette smoke in the 1970s?"

It was either cigarette smoke or this...