If one happens to smoke, a carton of one’s brand is usually considered to be a fine and welcome gift.
Son-of-a-wrek is trying to quit. It’s limited in every area of his life.
DIL is pregnant so she’s on the warpath about it.
He’s done the patches and gum and he even took a course of that pill that makes it easier to quit.
His new version of getting help to quit is by vaping.
Go by any highschool and the cars coming out have vapors coming from the windows.
Of course he’s well past highschool age but he thinks he is ‘cool’ now.
Indoor smoking is largely banned in Quebec (except in private, one family, houses). It is banned in my condo, although we did get a notice about it a week ago, so someone’s doing it. In addition, I see people smoking outdoors only rarely.
My parents both smoked and so, of course, did I. Until that day, 56 years ago, that I had a heart attack. Never took another puff.
Family members have told me stories of office meetings in smoke filled rooms.
Tobacco chewing and snuff dipping is nastier. I’m old enough to remember spitoons in stores and hotels. Snuff (the flavored kind) became popular again in the 1980’s. Soda cans were a popular spit container. I often wondered how many went to the recycling drop off.
I’m not old enough to remember when all of the seats in the auditoria used to teach university and medical students had ashtrays built into the back of the seats. But they did.
I am old enough to remember when indoor smoking was common. I remember when, as a child, the seat next to me on an airplane was designated “the smoking seat” for anyone who felt the need. I remember the vocal opposition to confining smokers to a single room or patio, to smoking in bars (this will put us out of business), to smoking inside. The number of smokers in Canada went down. I think it is still around 10-15%. In countries like Italy, China and Korea it is higher. I am sure Covid did not help reduce stress, or keep bars in business.
Are smokers really the pigs that they appear to be, or is it all people and smokers just have more opportunity to demonstrate it?
Smokers who think the entire world – both outdoors and indoors – is their ashtray are pigs. Note the above posts about the entire lawn and other outdoor areas being littered with butts. I remember when indoor social events were filled with stinking smoke and butts too. It was routine that people would drop their butts on the linoleum tile floor and step on them, so the whole floor was full of burn scars. This was just about everywhere.
You’ve all heard that line: “Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” Well, I’ve heard connoisseurs of oral sex describing the same thing about their experiences too.
When I was a boy in England, almost everyone smoked. When I was a teenager, I was at a boarding school - on Saturday, I used to go to the shop in the village and buy a couple of packets of 20. Later in the week, I would sell them singly for a small profit.
In my twenties, I was on 20+ a day, but I drew the line at smoking between courses at the dinner table. I was driving a truck then and used to buy a carton of 200 every week. In the 70s, the tax went up yet again and my carton cost me £3. “That’s it,” I said and quit. Withdrawal didn’t cause me any problems, it was more the social thing, like in the pub.
Now, 50 years on smokers are pretty much pariahs. No one I know smokes, and no one that I know of in my extended family. Cigarettes now cost the best part of £10 for twenty. 50p each - 62¢. Enough to make most smokers give up.
I spent a lot of time around French Canadian teenagers in Montreal in the 70s, and back then they all smoked. So things have certainly changed.
That sounds about right. These days, being a smoker seems to be a deal breaker for those looking to marry. But if they can find another smoker, ok. I notice Suzanne Pleshette had a short-lived first marriage. Her second husband died of lung cancer. She married Tom Poston, who later died of respiratory failure. Then she died of respiratory failure after having part of a lung removed because of lung cancer. All smokers?
In family situations, I think they reinforce each other. Mom and Dad smoke, so kid figures it’s be normal.
I was watching “An Inconvenient Truth” and Al Gore mentions that his dad grew tobacco…and his sister smoked, died of lung cancer. He says they stopped growing tobacco (but not when). Digging deeper (I don’t know if it’s paywalled or not):
Six years after Vice President Al Gore’s older sister died of lung cancer in 1984, he was still accepting campaign contributions from tobacco interests. Four years after she died, while campaigning for President in North Carolina, he boasted of his experiences in the tobacco fields and curing barns of his native Tennessee. And it took several years after Nancy Gore Hunger’s death for Mr. Gore and his parents to stop growing tobacco on their own farms in Carthage, Tenn.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/30/us/gore-forced-to-make-hard-choices-on-tobacco.
But the medical field didn’t come out against them for a long time.
Ad campaigns from back in the day with docs endorsing cigs
And of course pharmacies sold them, so how bad can they be? So it’s getting rarer to see smokers these days.
Vaping, on the other hand…
How similar were Quebecois to Parisians with an inevitable Gauloise in the corner of their mouth?
Last year my BIL, a heavy smoker for years, had 2 strokes. This was after 2 massive heart attacks in 2017 and 2018. The doctors treating him told my wife that his chance of survival was pretty slim. My wife and I had to clean out his apartment and put some of the stuff in storage. We throughout a lot of stuff like all his furniture, bedding and some clothing due to the stench of tobacco. I attempted to remove the stink from his fairly new Toyota pickup, days of ozone machine use and a trip to a detail shop couldn’t remove the smell. He somehow survived and is now a non smoker.
There was also a time a family get together would be a literal smoke fest. Almost everyone over 16 smoked. After watching many die from smoking, my mother, 2 aunts, a cousin, there are only a few smokers left. Now family get togethers are brag fests of folks saying how long they haven’t smoked. That is over 28 years for me.
It’s interesting just how much the social acceptance of smoking has changed in the U.S. in my lifetime.
Growing up in the '70s and early '80s in Wisconsin, smoking was ubiquitous. My parents both smoked (and still do), as did pretty much every adult in their middle-class social circle. Smoking was permitted in pretty much all public spaces, as well. As a young person, I never really noticed the fact that our house smelled like smoke, or that my clothes likely smelled like smoke – maybe because I was numb to it, or maybe because every place smelled like smoke.
And, then, I had a work-study job in college, where I worked for a chain smoker. He could smoke in his office, and he smoked four packs a day; every piece of paper in his office was yellowed, and every surface had a yellowish-brown haze on it.
I never smoked, and neither does my wife. When we’d go to visit my parents, we’d realize, once we got back home, that all of our clothes were carrying the smell of cigarette smoke. So, part of our post-trip ritual became throwing everything into the washing machine.
A few years ago, my sister (who is a smoker, as well, and lives with my parents) finally convinced my parents to not smoke in the house any more. In the summer months, they will smoke out on the porch; in the winter months, they set up the garage with a couple of chairs and a space heater to act as a “smoking room.” It is nice to come home from a trip to see them, and not have to run a load of laundry anymore. 
Wisconsin was one of the last states to ban smoking in public places, including bars and restaurants, only doing so in 2010. I know that it was a contentious decision, and a lot of bars were concerned that it would cost them business.
My mother, an inveterate worrywart, still claims she needs to smoke to ease her mind. Another thing is that she’s one of those ( and I’ve run into plenty of them ) who claim to be light smokers even though they’re clearly not. She’ll go several hours without smoking, but then will chain smoke for an hour, usually while talking on the phone. She knows damned well I ( and we, others in the family ) wish she’s quit because of health reasons. It’s also a damned expensive habit for someone on a fixed limited income.
She never smokes indoors though, either in her own home or when visiting others. This creates some friction as well, because when she visits she’s constantly closing windows or patio doors and making the place stuffy because she doesn’t want the smell of smoke entering the house. I suggest she smoke farther away from the house, but she’ll have none of that because it’s inconvenient, to which I reply, I’m more than happy to oblige making her smoking habit less convenient.
That’s why it is called an addiction. A mental health professional could help her, including a referral to a provider with can prescribe meds to help with cessation.
From a health standpoint, both of my parents know full well that they shouldn’t be smoking. Both of them are cancer survivors, my father has had a stroke, and my mother was recently diagnosed with COPD.
And, to be fair, both of them have quit smoking in the past, sometimes for several years at a stretch. But, for both of them, smoking is a way to deal with stress, and when they had quit in the past, it was increased stress in their lives which led them to resume smoking.
As @BippityBoppityBoo wrote while I was typing this, it’s an insidious addiction. I don’t know to what extent that my parents have actively sought professional help to quit smoking, but at this point in time (Dad is about to turn 88, Mom is 81), I’m not sure how much of a fight it’s worth having with them over it.
It is an insidious addiction alright, but unless I can force her getting professional help, it’ll just exist as lip service from her. It’s a similar situation as ‘kenobi 65’ relates to: she had actually quit smoking for a good 20 years, but took it up again in her 60s. Being a 24 carat worrywart, and a hypochondriac besides, only added fuel to the fire. So bizarre to see her deal with health worries by doing something unhealthy…And, like kenobi alludes to, at this stage wondering if the fight over this is worth it.
Best come back I’ve heard for mocking from gen-z is, “oh yeah, your generation thinks vaping is cool.”
I texted my Millennial kid from a music festival: “Is it possible to vape without looking like a clueless douche?”
But come to think of it, I look at all smokers like that. With a tinge of pity (‘cause o’ them bein’ suicidal an’ all).
Many of my coworkers are social smokers, meaning that they only smoke when they go out, or at a friend’s place, but never smoke in their own homes.
Before COVID, most work dinners would be interrupted by half the team going out to smoke. We had a work dinner in August and only the dedicated smoker was smoking. The social smokers hadn’t smoked for the last 18 months and didn’t feel like starting again.
My ex-boss will have to stop in another year. He promised his son, that if his son never smoked until 22, he would quit smoking. His son just turned 21, so his son will probably keep his end of the deal. And my ex-boss is the type of person who will do what he promised.
I used to know friends family who all smoked where the garage was where they were all allowed to smoke (they weren’t allowed to smoke outside for some reason) and the family had 8 people in it, so there was a constant stream of people entering and exiting the garage to go smoke. They did have some sort of air purifier in the garage for all the smoke and they did leave the garage window open for the smoke to escape but there were times me and my friend were in the garage putting together something messy just to have 6 members of his family all smoking and silently watching us.