To be so sick of cigarette smoke everywhere I go?

[WanderingNotLost]

And I do mean everywhere. Walking to the train station, people walking ahead of me smoking and I can't avoid it. Walking into the train station, at least half a dozen people desperately puffing away before they have to get on a train for max. 25 mins. Breathing out the last cloud of smoke as they get on the train and then their breath stinks up the carriage. Lighting up as soon as they leave the station at the other end. Walking from the tube station to work. Outside the building entrance when I go out for lunch. Same story on my way home. When I'm at home, can't have the balcony door or any windows open as other people's smoke wafts in. If it's not cigarette smoke it's that sickly sweet vapour. I just hate it so much, and I'm so aware of how bad it is for people - and smokers choose to do it, the people around them have no choice about breathing it in. If it were up to me it'd be illegal.

And please, please, no ridiculous comparisons to exhaust fumes (not that I drive anyway). Cars etc at least have a highly useful function, they get you from A to B. Smoking has literally not one single redeeming quality to make it worth all the negative aspects.

Can you ask your neighbours to smoke somewhere else so that it doesn't go in your house. They probably don't know you can smell it.

I was just thinking the other day how little cigarette smoke I encounter these days. Do you perhaps live in the developing world where smoking is still hugely popular?

It's awful, totally agree. Do it in your own house instead of forcing others to endure it.

It's the school run (and school gates) that really gets me. I always end up inhaling a load of secondhand smoke.

I'm kind of with you in that I hate cigarette smoke but remember that matters have improved dramatically over the last 20 years. Back in the day, my teachers at school chain smoked whilst teaching, my parents chain smoked in the car, restaurants and cinemas were full of smoke, people smoked on planes where the air is only recirculated, and on the tube and on trains. When I started work, clients in meetings would light up, and it was just tough if you had a boss who smoked. In hospitals, it was seriously argued that preventing smoking on the wards was depriving patients of a pleasure in life when it was suggested the rules might change. Be thankful that now largely you can largely avoid cigarette smoke :-) We all deserve clean air.

Although I agree with mitzy, I don't come across it much these days but when I do it makes me appreciate the fact it's been banned from a lot of areas now.

Mitzy - I live in London. Not developing, but definitely primitive in some ways!

NeeNahh I live in a massive U-shaped block of flats so I'd have to go round about 100 other flats and ask them all to pack it in - I doubt that'd work! a lot of them smoke weed as well (partly social housing) and you can smell that as soon as you turn the corner onto my street. If I stood outside long enough I could probably get quite stoned...

"All I say is be careful, please be careful that we don't patronise people.** As my mother would put it, people from those lower socio-economic categories have very few pleasures in life and one of them they regard as smoking."

"I note the forcible representations on banning smoking, particularly banning smoking to overcome the difficulties that the lower working class get out of the ailments of smoking."

"I just worry slightly about the unanimity of the medical and professional activists in taking that view."

John Reid, health secretary, 2004.

I very very rarely come across it nowadays and that only tends to be when I'm with a smoker friend and have followed them to the smoking area of a pub.

It's definitely a lot lot less than it used to be. Maybe take some comfort in that??

Of course you can be sick of it, but since you can't do anything about it I'm not sure what your aibu is about. None of us have total control when we're in public. You might hate the smell but you just have to tolerate it

Must be a pain but the smokers are all outside now, you can hardly ban them from being outside!

Back in the day, my teachers at school chain smoked whilst teaching

Where did you live??

I think because it is banned indoors now I'm that much more aware of it when I go outside. I used to love jogging but I've given that up because inhaling it when I'm already out of breath and panting would almost make me vomit.

My Mum smoked til i was about 22 and I've become more and more angry in hindsight about how she could have done that with two children. God knows how much damage she did to our lungs.

YANBU and seeing adults pushing prams or holding a baby or child whilst smoking gives me the fucking rage too

Oh come on, how much cigarette smoke could you realistically inhale when out running? You make it sound as though London is under one of those Victorian pea soup fogs. Of fag smoke!

Ah yes I remember the intrepid walk to the staff room door at school and the door opening and being engulfed in a huge plume of cigarette smoke and then having to convince my mother - no I hadn't been smoking I just went to see the deputy head - worse still when my Form Room was the science lab with chain smoking science teacher in the room between both the labs which contained all the flammable chemicals

To be fair where to you expect us smokers to go? We have been kicked out of everywhere civilised?!

I feel the same op. I'm an ex smoker myself, and feel awful that I used to be blowing smoke in people's faces while walking along etc. It does feel like it's everywhere, more than it used to be and not less, but I think as you say that's perhaps because we're so used now to the lack of indoor smoke.

Not sure there's much that can be done but as a fellow Londoner you have my sympathy. As if the air here wasn't already bad enough

I don't believe that you can't jog because of clouds of smoke, you're frankly being ridiculous.

There is no point at being angry at your mum know for a choice she made years ago

You're being very ott

Now boy know

Arg, now not know! Stupid autocorrect

indeed Arlow my mum smoked in pregnancy with me and dsis it was the early 70s everyone did it ! My grandma was told to take up smoking in the 50s by her gp for stress when her husband died leaving her a widow times have changed massively.

I never said I inhale 'clouds of smoke' when running but one big lungful when I'm panting will induce quite a coughing fit.

Arlow - I really don't think I am being OTT. When we know exactly how damaging it is to health I just don't see how anyone can justify doing it to themselves, never mind inflicting it on anybody who happens to be within a 10 metre radius.

I don't really experience it anywhere these days. It is FANTASTIC.

You can go out and go home, and you don't have clothes stinking of smoke.

You can travel on a train or a plane without smoke (shudders at the idea of it).

You can work in an office without smoke (when I started work, there were still smoking areas in the office I worked in).

And quite apart from the fact that you are no longer inconvenienced by the stink, it also means that lung cancer rates will drop, as people are not passively smoking nearly as much.

I am sorry that the OP feels it is still everywhere. Take a TARDIS to 1990 or even later and you'll see that it really isn't. Other than a few people smoking in the doorways of offices and the like.

Maybe because they enjoy it....?