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By rcwlee
#2702
The problem to be solved: There are a lot of places where people are supposed not to smoke, e.g. public transportation, McDonalds, cinemas, shopping malls, public toilets, etc. However, there are always smokers they are nuts and do not respect other people's right at all. They simply ignore the rules and keep smoking. For the time being, there is not much we (people don't like passive smoking or don't like the smell) can do. These few culprits smokers can also cause a lot of damages, e.g. fire.

The solution: Can some big chemical manufacturers invent some anti-smoke perfume which can be spread publicly. The perfume is as fragrant as other French perfume and does not cause harm to anyone. However, if anyone tries to smoke under the perfumed environment, the chemical will simply react with the dust and narcotine and cause the smoker nausea and unwell and force the smoker to stop smoking immediately. I think it is a great idea and is totally commercially viable because I am sure a lot of the airlines companies, shopping malls management, cinema operators etc. will buy this anti-smoking perfume.

Reward: More fresh air and more mutual respect
By Bluecube
#2742
Very, very clever. I'd prefer it to be odorless. Then smokers would stick to outside.
User avatar
By Michael D. Grissom
#2795
There are also people that consistently REAK of strawberry extract perfume and the like, people that never bathe and REAK of offensive body odor, people with halitosis (bad breath) that's so horrible that everybody must crack a window to breath, people that are SO paranoid of side smoke that when, as an experiment, I pretended to light up a cigarette (plastic battery operated cig that looked real but emits NO smoke or smell) in a high-class restaurant, people started holding napkins up to their noses, coughing, waving their hand in front of their faces as if to clear away the 'smoke' and eventually complained to the wait staff. The wait staff even informed me that people were threatening to leave if I didn't "put out the *beep* cigarette". I've had a lot of fun with that $2 plastic cig -- the tighter you squeeze it, the brighter the LED light gets inside the fake plastic ashes.

The point of all this is that I'm wondering where all this intolerance will end and if people will ever realize that life is not always fair. Trust me, the smell of that cig being smoked in the public bathroom stall is not anywhere near as bad as the stink you'll leave behind when your done doing your business.

And,...no, I don't smoke.

As for a perfume that would combat cig smoke -- the vapors from burning cocoa leaves when mixed with tobacco smoke smells horrible and is almost not breathable. Put that in a spray can and you'll have your product. If you want to have some real fun, try rolling a cig out of common Lipton tea grounds and smoking it in a public place. To some people, it smells so much like marijuana that you might get arrested.
:~(
By Stig Bakke's brother Stig
#2807
The stink from a (non-fake :-D ) cigarette might not be as bad as your average bathroom stall, but to my knowledge stall odor doesn't carry any health risks (or annoy the heck out of folks with contacts). It's not just about smell.

Michael may disagree, but I think rcwlee's idea is great. The only change I'd make would be replacing nausea with something a bit more severe... ;-)
By Tyger
#4677
Cocoa leaf incense might 'remind' my mother-in-law that I hate the smell of her cheap cigarettes. :-b
By Rishi
#4695
Though a past addict, slave, and what have you of Dame Nicotina Tabacum, am rather hazy about the history of smoking. Probably it has an Arabic origin. It was not till 1967 that the US Surgeon General's report categorically linking various diseases to tobacco was released. Incidentally this was largely responsible for my giving up smoking.

While rcwlee's idea is laudable and welcome, we do not know what effect a large scale deployment over a long time of whatever chemical it is will have on living organisms. The deterrent effect will be dose dependent. We may end up releasing tons of the stuff to catch a few defaulters. (In the second world war something like 8 tons of explosives were used to kill one person.)

It may take a long while to find delayed effects like mutageny and teratogeny.

Maybe the idea could be married to an aim-and-shoot tobacco smoke detector, which would spray the area around the smoker with the chemical so that it is delivered in the right dose and in a confined zone for a limited time.

If not illegal, one can borrow from 'miss playful's' idea on painting cats red to spray some non-toxic luminescent paint on the smoker to mark the culprit.

In a lighter vein, MDG's plastic cigarette beats the band!

Rishi
By aarthidhar
#4869
Similar to metal detectors is it not possible to detect whether a person has a cigarette ie. a nicotine detector installed at the entrance of the place hospitals theatres etc so that the people can't get them in at all?
By WSparrow23
#15596
Well so much for people's freedom. Why bother a smoker that's standing outside? That's like hunting down vegetarians to spray them with pig's blood.... There is a definite propaganda war against smokers these days, and it's working, but where does it end?
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