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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
That basically is my point. It’s eye opening for people who don’t think about drugs that way.
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.
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/
I’m old enough to remember the same things on airplanes.
There are certain places I actually miss cigarette smell in. Most importantly, bowling alleys. They just aren’t the same anymore. It was part of the ambiance.
yummy cancer juice
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.
There is a lot of science to back it up, but all of it is on the opposite direction (those things cause aging), and we can’t really tell if the aging we saw was caused by any of them or if there was something else going on.
Some of it is also styles. If you came of age in the 1970s, then 50 years on, you probably dress and have your hair done like it’s the 1970s. We associate those styles with old people and then see the same styles in old photos, which makes the people in them look old.
That’s only a partial explanation, though. A lot of that stuff did age you faster.
it was the chaos demons
Probably a lot of it was first hand smoke.
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!
It was sick near me, the pubs now clean up properly.
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
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?
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.
And 500 more cigarettes
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.
Same experience in Paris a while ago. My sister was about to dig into her spaghetti when someones cigarette ash drifted onto it…
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.
You should go to Cologne (or I bet any other major city), now it’s weed smell everywhere 😂
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.
I wonder if our current world has a specific smell that people from the 80s would notice
I’m hoping car exhaust takes that role.
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.
It’s common, but absolutely not omnipresent the way cigarette smoke was. Even now it’s quite distinctive and noticable, even if common.
Helps that most people don’t smoke a pack of joints every day.
People from the 40s would recognize the current smell of the world.
I feel like it’s probably the people from the ~1880s-1920s would know the smell of the world today
There’s more methane in the atmosphere now. It probably smells like a fart.
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.
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
You used to be able to light the rivers on fire too but Nixon helped ruin that.
Don’t worry, Trump is working hard to bring it back! Make Waterways Burn Again!
