Ask Lemmy

So when you were like 8 years old and you went into the bathroom at 2 in the morning and saw your parents' cigarettes you might try one out and wonder what was wrong with them.

Well I became a smoker myself (I quit in 2011) but even then I hated smoking indoors and never smoked in my apartment.

I think one thing a lot of people don't know now is that back then there was a WHOLE LOT of denial about the detrimental effects of smoking. I think this was mostly the tobacco industry's propaganda, but it worked. I remember talking with someone in the 90s that had some sort of cancer and had been a smoker most of his life. "No way to know if it was the cigarettes" that caused the cancer, he told me.

We are much, much more aware of the downsides of smoking now. The cat is out of the bag.

Growing up in the 1960s, my father was a chainsmoker. I never noticed. It was the water that little fish me swam in.

He quit when I was, I dunno, maybe 12 or 13. Suddenly, I noticed tobacco smoke when I encountered it, and it was revolting. I deeply resented having to work in an office in the 1980s that allowed smoking. I deeply resented restaurants with “smoking sections” that were just a half-wall separating me and smokers. I hated flying, with the stench from the “smoking section” filling my air.

How did I survive? Resentfully.

Childhood asthma, unfortunately. I was born in 1982 and basically everyone smoked everywhere here in the Netherlands. If you had a birthday, you couldn’t see across the room due to the smoke.

Because of it I had childhood asthma, which cleared up immediately when my parents stopped smoking. In the early 90’s, things got a lot better with smoke-free environments. We eventually got full on smoking bans, thank god. As far as I can tell, it didn’t do any permanent damage.

I still absolutely HATE smokers and smoking. It is and was an antisocial thing and children should never have been exposed to it like we were.

The same way people survived “gardyloo!” days. When you’re surrounded by shit it probably didn’t seem quite as bad as it would to us today.

I didn’t like all the smoke as a kid, but it is more noticeable and horrible these days since it is much less common, in my view anyway.

90's kid with smoker parents. You made do with the migraines. It was the absolute worst in winter car rides on bright days. Blinding snow plus second hand smoke migraine and no rolling down the window more than a tiny crack. Pure hell.

It was disgusting. You could only deal with it. No choice. As soon as someone smoked, I noticed right away. I would get coughing fits if anyone smoked near me at a restaurant. In bars it was horrible. In one particular case my throat was feeling like it was burning due to how thick the cigarette smoke was in the bar. And all your clothes would smell and it reeked in your room or apartment for a couple of days until you cleaned them. I don't miss that time at all. I'm so glad smoking is banned everywhere now.

If only they would ban smoking in apartment or condo buildings next. It shouldn't be allowed when you live in close proximity to other people and your smoke gets into their home.

So, I'm a bit younger than the era you're looking for, but my dad was an alcoholic and I remember as a kid being in the local bar and being juuuust short enough that I was just under the smoke line. I had to breach that line to get up on a bar stool and ask for a kitty cocktail. It always felt like I crossed the border to another world whenever I did.

I think I need to use more force to clear my lungs than my peers, but other than that my lack of athletic ability is mostly self inflicted.

You didn’t. As a child you got sick a lot with respiratory illnesses and ear infections, and you went to school reeking of cigs. But you didn’t realize it because you were surrounded by it. The quality of what you ate was often not as good either, because your parents couldn’t taste their food. And we’re probably still dealing with the long term health effects without knowing it.

It’s also fun whe you have to scrape the nicotine stains off the windows and scrub the walls when you finally sell your parents home.

My sister and I were wee little ones who one week brought home scads of stuff given to us by our school from the American Cancer society. We went running up to our dad screaming "We don't want you to die daddy!" with all that childish exuberance, and he quit cold turkey the next day.

Dude my parents chain smoked every day in a poorly ventilated mobile home. It was everywhere and we became noseblind unless it was directly wafting in our face (yuck). When I moved out everything was so much better. I was so happy to be able to breathe and not stink, however, I also left the house addicted to nicotine despite never having smoked myself.

I'm strongly suspicious that some of my current health problems might be tied to second hand smoke.

Edit: one thing I did to get around it was wash my clothes so that I'd have an outfit in the dryer (protected from smoke) to put on in the morning. Combined with morning showers I hope I didn't smell that much.

Being a non-smoker back then was a giant pain-in-the-ass at any workplace too because any smoker could and would take a break for a cigarette once an hour and then so would the manager and they'd get to be buddies but if you were known as a non-smoker you didn't get a break because you "didn't need one" I knew dozens of people, especially in healthcare, who took up smoking because that was the time to be social with each other and the managers.

That's the neat part - sometimes you didn't.

I had “childhood asthma” and had to carry around an inhaler.

Both my parents smoked so I didn't notice it growing up. Once I went to college and got away from that environment I really started to notice it all around me. Nothing was worse than opening up the closet and smelling the smoke on the coat you wore the night before at a bar. Luckily, my county was an early adopter of non-smoking sections and eventually outright banning and that changed everything.

It was so normalized you didn't really notice or think about it, or at least I didn't. It was just a thing you suffered through.

My family smoked like chimneys. I closed myself in my bedroom and avoided un-necessary contact.

Great grandmother got emphysema and died.
Great grandfather got throat cancer, a tracheotomy, and died.
Grandfather got lung cancer and died.
Mom got cancer and survived.
Dad had a massive heart attack and died.

My dad would always smoke at home. It was what it was, standard in Greece at the time, so what could I do? Ask him not to smoke so I could get beaten up? So I survived by shutting up and leaving home after 18.

You grew up in it and didn't notice.

But after the bans the first thing that stood out is you don't need to bleach every piece of fabric you took outside every day. The first time I went out, woke up the next day and my clothes didn't smell... you know, smoky I was very confused. Up until that point I assumed that was just what happened to dirty clothes, I didn't realize it was all the cigarettes.

Man, it was rough.

At family friends you'd take a break to get some fresh air or a bathroom break, as they smoked indoors and you had to be nice.

At restaurants I would push my parents for non smoking. One time they skipped that option and it impacted me so much I threw up all over the back seat.

They no longer opted for the smoking section ever again.

Even if it's not the 70s or 80s, I still grew up with lots of second hand smoke in the 90s. Once a year my village had a little comedy thing (german carnival) for one evening in the local gym. You couldn't see the stage after the first hour if you were like 10m away from the stage. It didn't matter, smoking, drinking and just a little music and everybody was happy. And it was the same in every restaurant or subway station. It just felt normal, it smelled the same no matter where you went and everybody smelled like cold smoke. After it got shut down in quiet a rush, the new normal came so quickly, that even today nobody can believe how it was just 20-25 years ago.

You really did get used to it in the sense that I don't remember it making me sick to be around it(my parents, aunt and grandma all smoked around me from birth to about 14 when I was diagnosed with asthma). But now if I'm around any cigarette smoke at all I'm sick for at least a week (congestion, cough, sinus shit) and I don't know how I rode in a car as a child with 4 adults ripping butts. Disgusting.

Both my parents smoked in the 90's and I never really thought about it until I was like 12, by then it was being banned in many more places. I thought cars smelled weird that didn't reek of smoke. I also sometimes smelled of smoke and probably smelled more to people who were not around smokers. Being around smokers from 0 -18 knock on wood I haven't yet had been diagnosed with anything. Second hand smoke everyday. I never took it up, as we know its not good for you. But I dont mind being around smokers, brings a sort of nostalgia for me the second hand smoke that is.