Deep breaths: Smoking pollution in Tel Aviv

I live in Tel Aviv, a city conducive to being outside, but it’s very hard to enjoy that experience when I inadvertently inhale smoke from multiple cigarette.

By ASHLEY FLUNGER

DECEMBER 4, 2019 15:21

Deep breaths: Smoking pollution in Tel Aviv (photo credit: ILLUSTRATIVE PEXELS) — Deep breaths: Smoking pollution in Tel Aviv

(photo credit: ILLUSTRATIVE PEXELS)

I’ve been living in Israel for nearly a decade. I would give you a more exact timeline, but I’m attempting to stay anonymous because the topic I want to discuss will undeniably come with a lot of backlash: smoking. The disgusting, selfish, cancer-inducing epidemic of smoking in Israel.

Growing up in New York in the 1980s, I recall a fair amount of smoking, but I also recall the serious push to eliminate it, or at least reduce it, in the ’90s and ’00s. Before making aliyah, I spent several years working in Manhattan. At my last place of work, in a 40-story office building in midtown, it was common to see two, maybe three people smoking outside the building when entering or exiting. Compare that to an office of just 40 people, where on a regular basis more than double that number could be found smoking.

Where I’m from, lighting up inside bars is illegal; it’s illegal in Israel, too, but not often enforced. Where I’m from smoking in public spaces is illegal; in Israel, it’s most certainly not. And this is what rankles me most – I can’t go anywhere without having smoke blown in my face or billowing in my vicinity.

I live in Tel Aviv, a city conducive to being outside, but it’s very hard to enjoy that experience when I inadvertently inhale smoke from multiple cigarettes. One of my favorite things to do is go to a popular spot overlooking the water to watch the sunset, but as it turns out smokers love that spot, too. On any given day it appears that about 90% of the people around me enjoy a cigarette (and more often than not, multiple cigarettes) and no matter how many times I shift my location I get smoke in my face.

The same goes for an afternoon on the beach, a run along the boardwalk or a walk down the street, for that matter. It is difficult to enjoy a night out at a bar when I know I’ll come home stinking of cigarettes I never wanted to be around in the first place. I either have to hang my clothes out to air or toss them directly in the wash simply because I wanted to grab a beer with a friend.

I know there are cultural differences and smoking is just one of them, but I don’t object to hummus and techno music on the same level. (Though I do find techno music offensive in a different way.) To me, smoking in public is problematic in the way irresponsible driving is: if you are going to do something dangerous, kindly leave me out of it. I don’t want to pay for your neglectful lifestyle, but you are giving me no choice.

A recent post on an immensely popular Tel Aviv-area Facebook group prompted this piece. A woman, clearly fed up after walking in a fog of smoke on a well-populated boulevard, dared to share her opinion on the problem in the city and was forthwith attacked by dozens of defensive smokers, many offering helpful suggestions like a return to the country from which she came. While discussions on the group often get heated, this was at once particularly rude, shocking and downright mean. The very suggestion that there might be a problem with smoking in the country sent so many people into a rage – the same people who claim to be more open-minded and accepting of others.

As someone who knows what it is to come from a major metropolis where health is prioritized over vice, I can tell you that my experience in many cities in Israel has been soured due to smoking. Whether individuals or the government want to accept it, there is a huge problem in the country, starting with teenagers, exacerbated in the army and ingrained in adults, that desperately needs to be dealt with. Putting aside the unpleasantness of going to a park or a beach and being surrounded by cigarette butts, the health ramifications are overwhelming.

For a country dealing with so many external problems, eliminating the ones over which we have control is a necessity.

*Name has been changed to protect the innocent.