My place's basement was a cigar smoking lounge for what I am guessing was 20 old men for 30 years. The rest of the house was fine. I washed the walls with TSP and removed buckets of yellow goo from the walls. Removed wallpaper form some areas, and repainted walls and ceilings. The walls have wood panelling halfway up which I couldn't do much about. That took are of 99% of the smell almost immediately.
It is basically gone now, but even 10 years on, when we go for vacation and shut the furnace off, the basement smells a bit like stale smoke. It goes away as soon as we get some air flow though, so it's not a big deal.
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