Ostracized by restaurants and banished from the workplace, smokers face yet another indignity.
They are being told that they smell by consumer-goods marketers and urged to spritz themselves with new odor-busting products.
The new products are intended to spray away smoke smells that linger in the clothes and hair of smokers and nonsmokers alike. Unlike traditional air and carpet deodorizers, they are intended for use directly on people and clothes.
Procter & Gamble Co. which has been test-marketing Febreze ''fabric refresher'' and is soon expected to roll out the product nationally. CNS Inc. of Bloomington, Minn., has introduced Banish, a ''personal smoke deodorizer'' that promises to remove smoke odor from clothing and hair. And L'Oreal SA of France is selling a new ''antismoke'' Studio Sense line of hair mists targeted at the young nightclub crowd.
The slew of products aimed at snuffing out smoke odor comes as the backlash against smokers and the smell they generate is hitting a new extreme. In Los Angeles, a man recently sued his neighbors, complaining that their smoking made him ill, and one company in New Hampshire sniffs delivery drivers to make sure that they haven't recently smoked.
The fact that most offices, shopping areas and restaurants in the country already are smoke-free has made nonsmokers even less tolerant of smoke when they encounter it, marketers say. At the same time, new stigmas attached to smoking have die-hard puffers looking for a way to eradicate smoke odors.
That's why 25-year-old Nina Turcotte washes her hands frantically every time she finishes a cigarette. ''Everyone knows the worst part of smoking is the smell,'' says Turcotte, puffing on a cigarette outside New York's World Trade Center.
Lots of people agree. In NFO Research's survey of 1,000 Americans, 22 percent of whom were smokers, 90 percent of the respondents said that it is important not to smell of smoke. To hide the smell, the survey found, most people douse themselves with perfume or cologne. More than 43 percent said they changed seats rather than sit next to someone who smelled of tobacco smoke, while 24 percent said they had turned someone down for a date because they smoked.
''Ten years ago, that smell wasn't interpreted negatively -- it was what it was,'' says Kirk Hodgdon, the vice president of consumer marketing for CNS, which commissioned the study. ''Now society has changed, and these odors are perceived very differently than the way they used to be.''
The new smoke-busting products here follow a similar trend in Japan, where smokers and nonsmokers alike have become fanatical about eradicating smoke smells. Philip Morris Cos. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. have introduced low-smoke cigarettes there, and several companies are marketing such neutralizing sprays as Hakugen's Angel Breath mist for clothes and Mandom's Fraiche hair cologne, which contains a ''smoke-block fragrance'' in a floral-bouquet scent.
In fact, Japanese smoke-busting products were the inspiration for L'Oreal's new hair-mist products, Warm Scent and Cool Scent. To promote the products, which come in clear blue and yellow bottles, L'Oreal sends workers to smoke-filled bars and clubs, where they spray the mist on clubgoers. Print ads show a man nuzzling a woman's hair, and the copy reads ''Scented mists that neutralize the smoke, the negativity.''
''Young people often are in places where there is a lot of smoke, but they don't like to personally smell like smoke,'' said Carol Hamilton, L'Oreal's senior vice president of marketing. ''If they're going home and living with their parents, they'll spray some on after they've been in a smoke-filled bar.''
The biggest player in the U.S. smell-busting market is P&G, based in Cincinnati. Its Febreze, which comes in a spray-pump container similar to those used for glass cleaners, promises to ''safely eliminate'' odors from smoking, pets and cooking as well as musty smells in closets.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Published: April 6, 1998