Smoking manners

[Costi]

Following recent discussions on smoking habbits, some of which turned into debates on issues such as the smoking in public ban or the possibility of a smoking prohibition, it occurred to me that many of the problems associated with smoking have their origin not in a lack of legislation but in a lack of manners.
There is an etiquette of smoking just like there is an etiquette of eating, going to the theatre or introductions. I believe that if people (smokers and non-smokers) followed these sensible rules of conduct there would be little need for laws to proscribe smoking.
As with any personal habit, etiquette rules stipulate a contract between society and the individual: society respects the smoker’s choice to inhale tobacco fumes and the smoker, in exchange, must follow certain rules of conduct if he wants his habit to be respected.

When at a private party or dinner, cigars are offered to guests by the host (never by his wife), or by the host’s son or a close friend. If a gentleman accepts a cigar or cigarette, he must smoke it immediately and not store it for later. Should he run out of cigarettes, he will not start asking around; instead, he will go out discreetly and buy a new pack.
A man will offer to light a lady’s cigarette (before lighting his, if they smoke together) and will stand up while doing it. If you ask a lady for a fire, she will hand you the lighter or the box of matches.
Before lighting a cigarette in a confined space, a civilized smoker will always ask permission of those present. Even if he is a guest at a close friend’s house whom he knows to be a smoker – he may have quitted recently and might ask you not to put his willpower to the test.
If the answer politely suggest that a window will be opened, the smoker will renounce. If elderly or ill persons or small children are present, we will not even ask permission to smoke.
If we invite a person whom we know to be a smoker, we will expect that he will smoke and therefore prepare ashtrays and place them in plain sight, as an invitation for the guest to feel free to smoke. If the guest knows the host doesn’t smoke and doesn’t enjoy the smoke much, he will not abuse.
Smoking on the street is reprovable for a lady, but it is not too elegant for a man, either. Besides, those walking behind us have no choice but to inhale our smoke and, if we walk on a crowded boulevard, there is a high risk of burning someone’s clothes or skin.
While smoking cigars and pipe is less harmful to health than smoking cigarettes, pipe and cigar smoke is heavier on the senses and may be more difficult to bear than cigarette smoke. Therefore we will avoid lighting up a cigar or a pipe in confined or crowded places.
Tobacco smoke and food are a terrible combination. If there is no special room for smoking in a place where others eat (at a restaurant, at a party etc.), the smoker will defer the pleasure of a cigar(ette) or pipe until everyone has finished eating or until he can get outside.

I will end my post with one of my favourite Oscar Wilde quotes:

“A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”

and invite members with more experience or a better memory than mine (I used to smoke) to join this attempt to prove that civilized smoking and smokers are not a problem to society.

[storeynicholas]

Costi - How gracious of you. What could there be to add to this concise vade mecum?
NJS

[Costi]

Why, thank you!
Perhaps an answer to this could be added (in the good tradition of quoting oneself ):

What do you do at a private party at home? Do you politely permit smokers to light their cigarettes, cigars and pipes, with the risk that some guests will probably leave after half an hour, unable to bear the smoke? Or do you politely suggest that they refrain from smoking because it is fastidious to other guests? Or do you (im)politely confine smoking to the balcony, kitchen or patio therefore creating separate groups? How do you reconcile good manners, the smoker’s right to smoke and and non smoker’s right to breathe clean air while they are both your guests?

[marcelo]

Indeed, there is not much to add to this short treatise on the fundamentals of the smoking ethics, except for it only considers the matter from the point of view of those affected by the smoker’s conduct, but not from the standpoint of the smoking party. (This fact may be incidentally explained by the biography of our author, since he describes himself as a former smoker). What if one abides by the principles of smoking ethics and, this notwithstanding, another person insists on your putting out your cigar, cigarette, or pipe? There must be a polite, gentlemanlike way to point out that, in these circumstances, one has a right to indulge oneself in an otherwise unhealthy practice. – As for my own biography in this regard, I do not consider myself a smoker, though will be happy to smoke a cigarette, or indulge myself in a cigar if the social circumstances prove inviting, i.e. among friends, in the same way one may drink socially.

[RWS]

The problem with smoking is that (save for those odd "smokeless cigarettes", which appear no longer to exist) it must always affect (and generally afflict) others: such is the very nature of smoke.

Smoking in company, then, will affect the appetite, demeanor, and health of others (believe me: my father, a military officer who never smoked, had in the course of a long career been subjected to so much second-hand tobacco smoke that he early developed severe emphysema and likely will never see as many years as could otherwise have been expected in his long-lived family). No considerate human being, then, can do other than refrain from smoking in the presence of nonsmokers.

Should a lover of the weed choose to smoke in private, he should be allowed to do so: as Costi observed, personal freedom should be exercisable whenever consonant with the freedom of others. But I should not be taxed to bear the costs of patching up the smoker's health when any of the resultant diseases and distresses begin to assail him.

[Costi]

Well, Marcelo, a civilized smoking conduct shouldn't normally give rise to such an opportunity. Should it, however, present itself, I think the decent thing to do is to put off one's cigarette, cigar or pipe, unless the request is clearly tendentious, the place is destined to smoking or the other person has a fair possibility to avoid inhaling the smoke.
If this happened on the open terrace of a restaurant with all tables full and a lady at the table next to yours objected to your smoking your cigar while she is eating, you may as well take your cigar a few steps further (if you can leave your table and your companion) or defer / refrain from smoking. What is the alternative - to draw attention to the lady that you have a right to smoke on the terrace because you pay as much as she or her husband does for your seat and food? I don't think so...
If another gentleman complained about your cigar in a smoking train compartment (in countries where they still exist), you could easily point out that he should have booked a non-smoking seat and he may spend the voyage standing outside if he is bothered. If the gentleman is an 80-year old asthmatic on a fully booked train and that seat was his last possibility to get on the train for some urgent matter... I don't know what the smoker should do.

I assure you that the author did his best not to be partial either to the smoker or the non-smoker, since manners (should) apply to everyone:

I believe that if people (smokers and non-smokers) followed these sensible rules of conduct there would be little need for laws to proscribe smoking.
As with any personal habit, etiquette rules stipulate a contract between society and the individual: society respects the smoker’s choice to inhale tobacco fumes and the smoker, in exchange, must follow certain rules of conduct if he wants his habit to be respected.
[...]
If we invite a person whom we know to be a smoker, we will expect that he will smoke and therefore prepare ashtrays and place them in plain sight, as an invitation for the guest to feel free to smoke. If the guest knows the host doesn’t smoke and doesn’t enjoy the smoke much, he will not abuse.

[Costi]

RWS, I may agree with what you wrote, but please let us try to regard smoking from the point of view of etiquette in this thread. Although we all failed in 2 or 3 previous threads, I am trying to see if this subject can be debated in a neutral and unengaged manner, this time with only etiquette and good sense as an arbiter.

But I should not be taxed to bear the costs of patching up the smoker's health when any of the resultant diseases and distresses begin to assail him.

An argument has been brought to the assertion I quoted above that tobacco taxing is so high it not only covers the medical costs of treating tobacco induced diseases, but it also pays for the heavy drinkers' liver transplants. But this is not the point. The point is we should try to endulge each other's habits and respect each other's choices, but both parties must understand what the reasonable limits are.

[RWS]

Forgive me, Costi; it is a subject which troubles me greatly, and I fear that when emotion ran, good sense fled.

I believe the etiquette -- socially exercised kindness -- in the matter is simple. The smoker should be indulged as much as possible: allowed (not encouraged) to smoke whenever not sensorily repulsive (rather than merely aesthestically repugnant) to others. And the smoker should refrain from exercise of his habit whenever it might offend others. With such a balance, all are inconvenienced but none are hurt; as in much of the rest of social life, isn't it?

[marcelo]

RWS, I understand your point and I am sincerely sorry about the way other people’s smoke affected the health of your father. His health was damaged thanks to persons who were not willing to abide by the principles which Costi formulated. I had in mind a sort of etiquette, not present in Costi’s concise treatise, relative to what would be acceptable for a gentleman – we are always talking, I assume, about gentlemanliness – to assert in his favor when he felt he did not flout those very principles. If smoking were always wrong, then there would be no point in talking of “smoking manners”. It should be simply forbidden.

If another gentleman complained about your cigar in a smoking train compartment (in countries where they still exist), you could easily point out that he should have booked a non-smoking seat and he may spend the voyage standing outside if he is bothered.

Now you add some points which were not apparent at the outset of the present thread. There are perhaps situations in which a man will not fail to be a gentleman if he, following the relevant principles of the smoking etiquette, decides not to yield to the preferences of a another person, unless, of course, he or she is a 80 years, etc. It means that, in being a gentleman one is guided by virtues, not by principles captured in the rules of etiquette. In being guided by true virtues, one will recognise what is suitable for a gentleman irrespective of established rules.

[Costi]

Very well put, RWS, if I may say so. Thank your for understanding the sense of my effort.

[Costi]

Rules (or following them) don't make a gentleman. Rather, the formulation of "rules" flowed from observing what was polite (gentleman-like, lady-like) behaviour, I think. Of course I would never admit that a gentleman sitting on a bench in a park should put out his cigarette because another gentleman (or even a lady, for that matter!) decided they wanted to sit on the same bench - even if it were the only one in the entire park. Of course, if the lady were 80 and she could barely stand... the gentleman might walk away without putting out his cigarette.

[storeynicholas]

I think that the 80 year olds described above in the thread are less likely to complain about someone else's smoking or expressly ask them to stop, as these older people are likely to have better manners and possibly even smoke! There is one bit about smoking etiquette that is missing - before asking for permission to smoke, one would say 'do you smoke?' or 'would you care for' and offer and, when declined, either take the hint or plough on and merely say 'do you mind if I do?' to which the only truly polite answer should be 'no'.
NJS

[RWS]

. . . . 'do you mind if I do?' to which the only truly polite answer should be 'no'. . . .

I quite agree, NJS, that the only polite answer is acquiescence; and so, for many a decade, I, too, was subjected to much second-hand smoke. Now, and especially after my father's unhappy fate became clear, I've begun to say (albeit somewhat apologetically) that I should indeed prefer that the questioner refrain from smoking while I'm in his presence. The response is one of surprise but, so far, also of respect for my concern.

Of course, on the smoker's own turf, the nonsmoker certainly cannot object.

[Costi]

In the presence of 80-year old people we should refrain from smoking anyway (unless expressly and sincerely encouraged), for two reasons:
1) at 80 we may not know their health condition and smoke certainly can't do them any good
2) they are

less likely to complain about someone else's smoking or expressly ask them to stop, as these older people are likely to have better manners [...]

and they may therefore suffer a martyrdom before they will hint at being bothered by your smoke.

As for the second part, you are perfectly right. Unless a person had a strong aversion or a health condition that would not admit tobacco smoke, the polite answer in the situation is "no". But I think that "do you mind if I do?" is not politely asked unless we are reasonably sure that the standard "no" reply will not be out of politeness only and the other party really is not bothered by tobacco smoke. Otherwise we are using someone else's politeness AGAINST themselves, an act that could be euphemistically described as "impolite" and of which I am sure you are perfectly aware! Should the person feel that such is the case, as I wrote before they may politely give their forced consent and hint at opening a window, at which the polite smoker will understand his smoke is not welcome and he must know better than take the invitation literally (to smoke and open the window, that is).

[storeynicholas]

I think that the social norms on the subject of smoking have moved so far and so fast from laissez-faire to actual criminalization in certain circumstances (and even a criminalization which does not follow anything really approaching any pre-existing morality), that it is very difficult to justify even suggesting lighting up before acquaintances of whose habits and ideas on this subject one is ignorant, even in one's own house; especially as there will frequently be the very young and the very old present . I suppose that one could ask all guests: "does anyone smoke?" and if all hands shoot up (in relief), it's safe for all to combine in acts of mutual destruction, but if even one remains down, that's the end of it. It's surely very unlikely that all hands would shoot up. Maybe, this is why it is a pity that places expressly for the exclusive use of smokers, and into which non-smokers need never venture - like club smoking rooms, are not permitted smoking areas.
NJS