often seen in the street without a hat

I don't know - I've never smoked. (Bear in mind that the following is based on experience of a couple of types of inhalers from about 1990-2000, and so possibly completely wrong) Different inhalers seem to vary on whether they advise you to breathe into them first, but the basic idea as I understand it is that ideally you should have just started breathing in as the thing fires high-velocity powder down your throat. This makes it more likely that you'll breathe it in and less likely that you'll swallow it (almost certainly tastes foul).

If you have trouble, go back to the doctor or chemist and ask for a spacer, which is a thing like a rhomboid bubble that you squirt the inhaler into, wait for the powder to diffuse, then inhale from.