You could smoke in supermarkets. And the London Underground.
No kidding. My wife’s grandfather had originally not been allowed to smoke in the house by his wife, but after she died in the 1980s, he lived by himself, and smoked indoors constantly. I remember going over there one weekend with my wife, and we did a thorough cleaning of the house. I’d never seen what it had looked like prior to his indoor smoking, and when I started cleaning the kitchen walls with Spic & Span, I was amazed to discover that what I thought were beige walls were actually white! 
Yes, pretty much.
I remember smoking sections on airplanes (among other places).
I remember them quite fondly.
I’m old enough to have flown on airplanes with a smoking section (e.g. flying to LA in 1984), but I don’t remember being particularly bothered. Maybe I wasn’t sitting close enough to the “border”.
Certainly not as bothered as I was when I ate at a restaurant in Nanjing in 2006 where there was a thick haze in the air.
I mean, you can’t just leave us hanging like that.
Care to share one?
Same here, except it was a month at summer camp.
Came back and spent quite some time nauseas and even vomited a bit.
My mother quit a while back when one of her friends died of lung cancer. My father still smokes, but tries to hide it.
Unfortunately, it also hooked me, so I ended up taking up smoking at 14 myself, and continued for about 20 years. Didn’t really quit, but switched to vaping. Maybe not great, but at least I can walk up a flight of stairs without being winded.
Yeah. Well, you’re all in one tin can so basically any flight that allowed smoking was one big smoking section. Having separate seats was a joke.
I remember flying in late 1988 when airlines were just beginning to restrict smoking on flights less than two hours. I watched one woman seated near me frantically handling a cigarette the entire flight. Not lit - but she just couldn’t deal with the flight without it.
IIRC, smoking was banned on all domestic flights a year or two later but overseas flights still allowed it for a bit.
In the late 1970s, I had to take a bus to get back to college after one break. 8+ hours, and there were smokers. My then-boyfriend greeted me when I got back to the dorm and genuinely thought I’d taken up the habit. Nope, just reeked of it.
Planes actually cycle the air pretty regularly. As long as you are “upwind” it doesn’t seem it would be too bad.
The last time I was at an airport, at least 15 years ago, there was a specific smoking lounge that was pretty far out of the way.
I’m not as bothered by smoking as some, so I may have some bias, but I think even a non-smoker would prefer to sit next someone smoking a cigarette than spitting their tobacco juice into a cup.
As I understand it, smokeless tobacco requires you to have a spit cup of some sort. It may have been illegal, or it may have simply been prohibited by the airline because why should the staff have to deal with THAT.
We used to fly regularly to Germany via Lufthansa in the 70s, and I recall clearly when they went to the last five rows smoking. All that happened was that all the other smokers on the plane went to the back, struck up conversations with the folks sitting, and puffed away while blocking the aisles. Even though I lived in a house where two adults smoked about three packs a day combined, it was still horrible.
That’s a totally different concern than second hand smoke.
ETA: And one could spit in a sealed plastic bottle. No messy clean up. No brass spittoons in the aisle.
Well yeah, but even in a sealed plastic bottle, would you want to have to deal with handling that? Plus you know the jerks would leave that nasty bottle in the seatback compartment, or fail to close the cap, or not have a cap on it at all, and expect the flight attendant to gather it up without complaining.
But yeah, it is a different concern than secondhand smoke, which is why I speculated that regardless of the legality, the airline may have made that rule.
But again, not a second hand smoke problem. A janitorial problem.
ETA: And only announced for a flight bound for WV…sort of insulting.
@UltraVires I’ve seen guys spitting their chew juice into the seat pocket in front of them.
Back then, was the airflow in the cabin designed to go from the front to back to ensure the smoke only stayed in the back of the plane? I remember being told that as a kid, but from what I understand modern planes don’t do that. From the covid stories about the safety of flying, they say that each few rows are their own zone where fresh air comes in and exhausts just from that small area. So it’s little zones in the cabin rather than fresh air in at the front and stale air out at the back.
I remember not long after domestic flights went non-smoking, we were on a plane with a guy a couple rows back who didn’t want to get with the program.
He was puffing away, evidently drunk as well, nodded off and then got into a drunken argument about his behavior with the stewardess. Fortunately he didn’t set fire to his seat while unconscious.
Not likely at all.
Despite what the tobacco company ads tried to imply, there was never a time when even half the population smoked. The peak was in 1955-1965, when 42% smoked. it’s been dropping ever since, and is now about 14% (only 1 person in 7 smokes).
If he sat in the limited number of smoking rows available near the end of the time smoking was allowed on planes then it could easily look that way to him.
Movies were non-smoking in the 40s. At the entrance, there was a big decorative elephants-foot full of sand, in which you had to extinguish your smoke. My dad would would put his half-smoked cigar in the sand, and after the show, he’d retrieve and relight it. Two-for 15c, dont let a good LaPalina go to waste.