I only smoke at home, and I don't smoke in our new car. Oregon has such restrictive smoking laws that it is difficult to smoke anywhere in public unless you are in your vehicle or walking down the street, so I smoke at home, usually on the back deck or the front porch. Occasionally a family member or visitor who smoke cigarettes will join me when I smoke my pipe.
Several of you have made the point that people feel perfectly free too offer you their advice about your smoking. This was never more evident to me than when I was working in smoke shops. In those days, the 1980s and early 1990s, the state of Oregon had Exempted smoke shops from their Draconian anti-smoking laws. They have since corrected that oversight and one can no longer smoke in a smoke shop or a cigar store! I find that absurd.
While working in the smoke shops I received abundant comments about how nice the shops smelled. 99% of comments were positive, even when someone was smoking a cigar in the store. There was however that 1% who would open the closed door of the shop, walk in and inflict upon me their opinions about smoking. C. Everett Coop was in his Hay Day in the 1980s and the anti-smoking movement was beginning to gain ground. They were often surprised when I quoted to them from a US surgeon general's report that said pipe smokers on the average live three layers longer than non-smokers. The usual reaction was, "I find that hard to believe!" I usually responded by saying, "you believe the Surgeon General when he says smoking is bad for you, but you don't believe him when he says pipe smokers live longer than nonsmokers. So which one of those statements is false, and why would he lie?"
That usually ended the discussion and they would leave.
One day lady walked in and asked me, "How are you going to make a living when they outlaw tobacco?"
I responded, "then I will get rich because prohibition never works. It only creates a black market which is usually quite lucrative." She left in a huff without sharing with me anymore of her enlightened thinking!
But mostly I had very positive experiences with people as I listened to them reminisce about how a beloved family member had smoked a pipe and how they missed the aroma.
I stopped smoking for about 20 years and recently started smoking my pipes again.
One of my daughters came over to the house the other day after I had been outside smoking. She gave me a big hug as she usually does, stopped and gave me another big hug and took a deep breath and said, "Mmm, memories of my childhood!" I got several more hugs before she left just so she can smell my pipe tobacco that she remembered from her childhood!
