It’s not surprising or new that people know that cigarettes themselves are bad for one’s health. Secondhand smoke is not good for you to be around either. If you are a nonsmoker you might feel like you are being rude if you try to move away from the smokers you meet, but it is okay to speak up instead of suffering in silence while others engage in behavior that is negatively impacting your health. How can you remain cordial but healthy when you choose to step back and away from secondhand smoke? What are the dos and don’ts of not offending a smoker’s habit that offends you and puts your health in jeopardy? It comes down to being considerate of others around them. However, awareness of the negative health impacts of cigarette smoke on the nonsmokers around them can range from honest ignorance to stemming from a cruel and intentional lack of consideration. You shouldn’t need a reason to accompany a request or act to distance yourself from secondhand smoke, but staying cordial sometimes is not enough or downright impossible. Here are five tips for how to avoid breathing in the unhealthy byproduct of some smoker’s bad habits.
1. Signs
Let your displeasure speak for itself and show that you cannot tolerate any secondhand smoke without speaking a word. Use your hands to fan away the smoke while moving farther and farther away from the toxic-for-you secondhand smoke scene. Message sent and received. If they put out their cigarette or move away even farther from you to smoke, it’s a win-win situation. They can finish or stop smoking their cigarette for the time being. You can breathe freely and easily, without any guilt of asserting yourself and without losing your cool about something that is as personally offensive as unwelcome and unwanted cigarette smoke. Remember: smokers’ rights end where they infringe on your enjoyment of yours as a nonsmoker. This includes considering whether or not you have the ability as a nonsmoker to tolerate being in the same environment as a smoker. You should be able to breathe worry-free without risking any negative health effects from a negative health habit that was never yours or to be welcomed and shared, to begin with.
2. The pleasant request
This request will put the burden on the smoker to act better (e.g., put out their cigarette or stop blowing smoke close to where you are, etc.) or they need to move away from you. Starting with a smile is a good foundation for a smooth delivery of a phrase like, “Do you mind smoking elsewhere, please?” No excuse. No criticism. No judgment. Just a neighborly request kept light and polite, hoping to meet with understanding and then an accommodation of your request.
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3. Confrontation
These first two tactics may have allowed you to communicate without any problems. If they don’t work, you will have to ramp things up to get your message across. The etiquette of how to deal with undesirable cigarette smoke may require that you speak up for yourself. Again, this time no reason is necessary, but you may want to watch your tone, even though you are in the right.
Clear and confident wins the day with a simply stated message that leaves nothing to question. You might use a phrase like, “I don’t like breathing cigarette smoke.” No criticism. No personalization of the offense by putting any accusation that uses a possessive pronoun like “your”. You are seeking to avoid appearing to blame the smoker. This technique pairs nicely with number one, especially if it seems like the smoker is clueless that their secondhand smoke is hard to take. How you make this comment can get you closer to the desired outcome by calmly expressing your escalated intolerance without raising your voice or cursing them out.
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4. The Victor, Not the Victim
“I can’t breathe with all of your cigarette smoke! (cough, cough)” Intensifying your expression of your discomfort with the secondhand smoke may make it harder for you to breathe without coughing and might be the logical next step after the confrontation of number three. With this method, you may come off as offended and that’s okay because you are. This is especially true if you cannot take a breath without inhaling their cigarette smoke.
You may be on a break and want to get some fresh air or clear your head and relax a little before your break is over. All you want to do is be able to inhale and exhale without any barrier, like cigarette smoke, which could prevent you from doing so. Smokers set up the barrier with their cigarette smoke and you just want to remind them that not everyone wants to breathe that smoke for health or other reasons.
For you it’s clear that their choice of behavior in a public and shared place as a common break area is making it extremely challenging to meet a basic, biological need: breathing…clear and without any impediment or interference, both of which secondhand smoke is. When placed on a pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs, breathing is a fundamental need while smoking is not.
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5. Health Concerns
Coughing. Eyes watering. Anger and irritability. These results or even more tensions and long-term conditions, like asthma, make health concerns the most used and most critically important excuse in the shared outdoor environments where smokers and nonsmokers are most likely to interact. Comments can range from snarky intolerance to appeals for compassion and respect. Simply put, you hope that bringing up health concerns will push the smoker to be more considerate with the least amount of confrontation or need for a detailed explanation.
This one technique is a desperate appeal to a common understanding that not everyone wants to breathe secondhand smoke from their cigarette. It can also worsen the level of offense between a smoker and a nonsmoker with neither wanting to yield as to who is in the right or who gets to decide who must change their behavior to keep the peace and what is the fairest way to do so. The best outcome may be a mix of degrees of understanding but without compassion, care, or true concern. Apathy, anxiety, and anger can easily become a part of the social atmosphere of the two very different perspectives of a smoker and a nonsmoker.
Nonsmokers see clouds of smoke bearing future health problems like emphysema, COPD, bronchitis, or cancer. These all stem from avoidable breathing difficulties caused by smokers contributing to an unhealthy shared space. Hostility from each alike may develop. Maybe the false expectation is that smokers would alter their behavior for people who care about their health conditions. This is highly unlikely when their choice to smoke in the first place demonstrates an informed choice of accepting the hazards of smoking for themselves. A lack of assurance about what responsibilities smokers have for how that choice impacts others drives the debate.
Given this awareness, they probably would not smoke in the first place if they cared about the possible personally detrimental health outcomes from the choice to smoke. Despite the numerous health risks associated with smoking, there are still many smokers. Why would a smoker care about someone else’s lack of health from their smoker-produced secondhand smoke, when they do not care about their own health? The best course of action for a nonsmoker stuck with inhaling secondhand smoke is to step away from the smoker, wear a mask in commonly shared outdoor spaces, and limit close contact that can transform into a confrontation of smokers who cannot be reasoned with.
