This reflex defies logic or reason, it is a Pavlovian response to seeing something that looks like smoke or a smoker. It has a tell tale soft cough cough with hand put to mouth, why everyyone does it the same I dunno.
It is even better since I use an ecig which produces essentially odor free vapor, I’ve been walking outdoors using it and a guy rounds a hill and comes into view me and does it reflexively and he was UPWIND of me:D
I’ve seen people go out of their way to get the chance to do it, in a park where I was sitting way apart on a tree stump with no one around a woman sees me and does a beeline bypassing a bunch of empty benches to sit near my on one with a puddle around it…yep there it is!
Even better when they look and see I’m not actually smoking, the expression reminds me of the RCA dog. Hilariously I hear some assume I am smoking a crack pipe, or some unknown drug.
A long dramatic pause on stage provokes an absolutely irresistible throat-tickle in me. Every time.
So for every self-righteous non/anti-smoker who does this, the rest might be doing it as a long-conditioned reflex. Cigarette smoke does irritate many non-smokers, and I mean that in a physiological way, not a mental/political way. You want to smoke? Fine. Live with the fact that more and more people only encounter smoke infrequently and don’t have a hardened anti-cough reflex.
It’s not an unknown drug – just another addict taking their hit of nicotine. As such, your olfactory sense is probably so deadened that you don’t even notice the stench of those e-cigs. But the rest of us certainly do, and it’s often enough to cause a person to cough. At least it doesn’t cause cancer (so far as we know yet).
This just isn’t true. There’s a man in my building who likes to smoke his down in the laundry room. If I happen to be in there when he is, the whole room and hallway smell like cheap strawberry air freshener.
Earlier this week I was waiting at the bus stop, in the shelter, and a man came in smelling of bug spray and my first though was that he had bed bugs or fleas so I moved away from him, out of the shelter and that’s when I realized it wasn’t him at all. It was some guy standing outside of the shelter smoking his ecig. There was a cloud of visible “smoke” around him that reeked so bad of bug spray that everyone moved far away from him.
i especially love it when they do the fake cough on simply seeing a cigarette, double points if it isn’t even lit. Triple points for throwing in that “you disgusting smoker you” look.
Eh. My father smoked, and did so in the car with the windows closed and in other situations that pooled the smoke. As a child I would resist coughing as long as I could, because he always got mad when anybody coughed, because he took it as a comment on his decision to smoke. Because he knew he shouldn’t be doing it, and felt judged.
So my position is the exact reverse of yours – I hate that defensive anger smokers use to dismiss their guilt when they make someone cough.
I mostly use a local brand of menthol or tobacco flavor juice and don’t use those shoebox size cloud makers, it has no real smell trust me my wife would complain if it did. Like I said these incidents were outdoors, and the dude was walking toward me and the wind was in my face.
There is a local stigma about smoking being immoral too not present in the US, like smoking is unchristian. Once a girl was asking me a bunch of questions about the ecig like does it provide enough nicotine to hold you, in depth so I assumed she was a smoker an told her yea it will hold you depending on the juice strength try it if you smoke. You’d think I implied she liked to give blowjobs to hobos, the way she reacted and said ME no way I don’t smoke, what made you think I a that kind of girl?! I said just how curious you were sorry,
I’ve had people say how horrible it is I use an ecig outside where my son can see me, uh OK. They aren’t worried about the non-existent smoke of nicotine, just how immoral it is I guess lol.
I am a rare nonsmoker in my family, and back when it was not unusual to go to my mother’s house for a winter holiday - meaning the house was closed up - and with two or more heavy smokers, we’d get there to a light mist and leave several hours later literally unable to see the door on the far side of the living room. I once had my family put on filter masks when we went in, as much as a prank as anything else. My mother’s feelings were deeply hurt and my sister was still pissed about it 30 years later.
