When the Exorcist was rereleased on the big screen a couple of years ago, audiences actually laughed out loud at the scene where the doctor is smoking while talking to the mother in his office.
Great site…Thanks!
I graduated HS in 1989, and there was still a student smoking area outside. It was no longer there when I returned to teach at the school in 1993. (This is a Catholic high school.)
As for the movies: once or twice a year, we go to see a drive-in movie, and one of the cool, retro things about this particular drive-in is that they show all of the really old promo-type stuff, with the dancing candy-bars and such. One such promo urges the viewers to go to the snack bar and get a delicious soda, candy, and a pack of cigarettes. I know it’s outdoors (or in your own car), so the smoke wouldn’t bother anyone anyway, but it’s funny to see. It’s also strange to see how different the cigarette packaging looked 30-40 years ago.
I worked in a grocery store in the early 90’s, and customers as well as workers were permitted to smoke. I also remember men smoking in the back lobby of the church I attended. Now they have to go out to the front steps.
I’m not sure, but I think the casinos around here (Foxwoods, etc.) will give you cigs if you ask one of the cocktail girls for them. Loosies were outlawed around here about 8-10 years ago, though. I don’t know why. Supposedly it’s for underage considerations, but now I guess the underage kids will have to buy a whole pack.
Ooh, I just remembered another one. My grandfather’s funeral was in the 80’s, and the funeral home had a fancy silver cigarette box loaded with cigs in one of the rooms where the mourning families would sit. I thought that one was pretty strange too.
Funeral home basements had ashtrays; it was tacky to smoke upstairs in front of the Body of Honor, though.
Remember smokers on my only childhood flight in 1974, although they did have to snuff them during landing. I remember suffering on Amtrak trains until the end of the 80’s, when they had A NO-SMOKING CAR!! Then they had each car with a SMOKING or NON-SMOKING sign in front, which they would switch on or off depending on demand; of course, all the cars reeked of smoke anyway. Now it’s all no smoking except for the platform at New Haven 
Didn’t go to enough hospitals, thank God, to remember them, but I do remember people smoking on subway platforms while not being allowed on the cars. I remember smoky teacher’s lounges, and cafeteria workers smoking in the back of the kitchens, and smoking student lounges in the HS my Dad taught at. Born 1964.