My sister and I were preteens by the time we got our parents to stop smoking. We don’t remember the exact moment, but we vividly recall that, until it happened, there was never a time when we weren’t breathing the ever-present nicotine cloud smoke in the house and the car.
Cigarettes were cheap, and ashtrays were plentiful — there was always one within reach to catch their ashes. And in our Southern hometown, smoking was the norm — everybody around my parents smoked day and night. We were miserable.
Finally, our loud complaints about the ubiquitous smoke and our pleas for them to stop resonated. They both quit cold turkey.
Those childhood memories are a world away from my smoke-free life today. It’s been ages since I’ve found myself in a smoky room, or even outside catching a whiff of cigarette smoke. Most of my friends don’t smoke — never have — and the few who do are careful to do so away from the rest of us.
Of course, I live in a place where nonsmoking is the norm either because there is wide acceptance of smoking’s life-threatening link to diseases like lung cancer, heart disease and diabetes — or because most public spaces operate under strict anti-smoking rules.
No doubt why Brookline, back in 2020, approved a first-in-the-country ban, which went into effect a year later and this month was upheld by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
The Brookline bylaw is simple and targeted: Anyone born after Jan. 1, 2000, can’t purchase any tobacco product — cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes — in the Norfolk County community. Convenience store owners and others had claimed Brookline’s ban conflicted with the 2018 state law which bars anyone under 21 from purchasing tobacco products.
Opponents have also pointed out that Gen-Zers and Generation Alphas who can’t buy in Brookline will merely travel to the neighborhoods bordering Brookline — including Allston, Brighton, Mission Hill and West Roxbury. Fair point, but those naysayers are forgetting one reason it could work: Having to travel to those outside communities is inconvenient. Americans hold convenience at a high premium. I predict that, every day, managing how to buy cigarettes and dodge the law will get old quickly.
Besides, even with the increase in vaping across the country, smoking rates overall have dropped.
And not only are more communities considering the Brookline anti-smoking model, but multiple studies have shown that smoke-free campaigns do work, both in getting smokers to quit and keeping others from ever starting to smoke.
My sister and I are proof positive: We have never been tempted to light up, and once my parents stubbed out their last cigarettes, they never looked back. Bravo to Brookline.
