Becoming aware of the smoke smell

G. Alan Marlatt, 64, is a University of Washington psychology professor. His grandmother was a chain smoker: “She’d be cooking eggs and the ash would flip into the eggs,” he said. “I’d eat the part where the ash didn’t fall.”

J. David Hawkins, a 60-year-old professor of social work at UW, was 10 when he and his parents took an airplane ride from St. Louis to California. Every passenger received a small pack of cigarettes. Hawkins’ parents didn’t smoke, so the young Hawkins asked his parents if he might keep their packs. Yes of course.

Hawkins said, “It was such a different time.”

I’ll say. Tuesday, Washington state voters approved one of the country’s strictest smoking bans. As of Dec. 8, people won’t be allowed to smoke in bars, bowling alleys or most other public establishments. Smokers also won’t be able to puff away near doorways and windows.

As this latest smoking cultural change descended upon us, I explored another cultural evolution concerning sensitivity to the smell of cigarette smoke.

Before the anti-smoking movement, children grew up surrounded by smoke. Many of our parents smoked in our homes and adults smoked in stores, offices, movie theaters and on airplanes.

We children must have reeked of smoke. Yet – with the exception of a few aware characters – we rarely smelled this smoke on ourselves or others.

Now, if a smoker writes me a letter my office fills with the stench of it. What happened between then and now?

In search of answers, I tracked down Marlatt and Hawkins, two UW professors who have studied smoking and addiction issues. They haven’t researched the smoke-smell phenomenon specifically, but they agreed to engage with me in some conjecture.

Marlatt, raised by his chain-smoking grandparents, took a drag on his first cigarette at 14. He didn’t quit until his mid-40s. He and his friends liked the smell of smoke. “It wasn’t a negative,” he said.

Cigarettes then were associated with glamour and coolness. He wonders if that put a positive spin on everything associated with cigarettes, including its smell.

Now, it’s as if our entire culture has gone through aversion therapy. Smoking is bad for you, therefore it smells bad, too.

The smell of cigarette smoke is still a positive aroma for some, however. Marlatt, director of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at UW, said smokers sometimes relapse after smelling smoke in bars. While out on the town, smokers trying to quit will now face fewer triggers tempting them back.

Fifty years ago, Hawkins kept those airplane cigarettes given to him by his nonsmoking parents. When he experimented with smoking as a teen, he started with those smokes, but the habit never took hold.

Now he understands why. In an ongoing study of Seattle’s young people, Hawkins and fellow researchers found that teens of smokers are twice as likely to smoke, compared with teens raised by nonsmokers.

Those of us who were teens in the 1950s and 1960s were exposed to a lot of smoking adults. In 1965, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics showed that 51 percent of adult men, and 34 percent of the women, smoked. Compare this to 2004 smokers: 23 percent of adult men and just 18 percent of women.

Cigarette smoke permeated the carpets, drapes and furniture of our youth. It was in the deep background of our lives, sensory-wise, Hawkins said. Muzak for the nose. Maybe that’s why we rarely noticed it.

But because smoking is now banned in most places, the smell of it stands out the way rock music would if blasted into a quiet room.

The passage of Initiative 901 might force smokers to light up more often in their homes and cars. Unlike in the old days, however, the smell of smoke on their children won’t go undetected by others. It’s such a different time. We can all breathe a little easier now.