Marijuana, smudging sage or cedar, paper, incense, etc have a pretty strong smell but they dissipate much faster than tobacco smoke especially cigar smoke
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Smoke in general doesn’t just generate solid dusty debris like ash, but also liquid vapors which contain tar and other chemicals that stick to and soak into surfaces,
This includes cigarette smoke, which also includes chemicals like nicotine. The nicotine intake from inhaling cigarette smoke is actually a vapor that is mixed in with the smoke.
The tar and liquids in smoke actually do more direct damage to the lungs than the solids.
This is how vaporizers work. They just vaporize the nicotine without burning anything along with flavorings and water vapor. They do not produce the tar or carbon monoxide that cigarettes do.
(THIS DOES NOT MEAN VAPING IS A “HEALTHY ALTERNATIVE”. THERE ARE STILL VERY DANGEROUS CHEMICHALS IN THE VAPOR, JUST FEWER OF THEM.)
Over time, these liquids build up creating a foul smelling film that gets into everything the smoke touches. Mostly the tar in particular.
When you see the discoloration on the walls in a smoker’s home, this is what it is, the tar and vapor elements of the smoke, and it is what generates most of the smell that lingers long term.
It’s why the yellow/brown film that you see in homes where smokers have lived is so sticky. It’s a huge pain to clean up, and is similar to trying to clean tree sap off of something.
Other particles will stick to it as well, so there is a fair bit of solids mixed into the film cigarette smoke generates (ash mostly). It acts sort of like a glue, and those solid particles also contribute to the odor, but not as much as the sticky liquid parts.
Fabrics pick up this sort of odor very easily and will usually be the first things to start smelling like smoke, but others surfaces will also soak it in and develop enough of a film to keep the odor long term. The more porous a material is, the easier it retains the smoke odor.
Other smoke does this too. If you’ve ever been in a home after a large house fire, it has a very distinctive odor to it. The sheer volume of smoke creates enough of a film that it happens very quickly, and it is extremely hard to get rid of the smell.
Cigarette smoke takes a little longer to build up because it lacks the volume of smoke that something like a housefire will generate, but due to the sort of constant smoking most smokers do, it builds up faster than you might expect.
Basically, it’s the tar mostly, and other chemical vapors in cigarette smoke contribute, with the solid bits like ash that stick to it also contributing to a much lesser degree.
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