No problem, UV, I am not trying to junior mod here. I was just saying that I couldn’t help but respond to your post, but I wasn’t going to engage in a continuing discussion about it in this thread.
BTW, glad to hear that you’re not a smoker. Obviously I’m not either, but I was, some 25 or 30 years ago. I don’t know whether that has made me extra sensitive to cigarette smoke or not.
When I was in high school, seniors had a private indoor area. We had a pool table in there, and I think I remember a ping-pong table too. Plenty of comfortable chairs, a couple of tables and desks. It was a great place to hang out. Faculty could only enter by invitation.
Smoking was permitted in the senior room. Seniors were permitted to smoke in other areas of the school at the discretion of the faculty member in charge of that particular area.
Occasionally a faculty member would knock on the door of the senior room and ask if anyone could spare a smoke.
Nah, that’s cool. I’ve cared for enough asthmatics (including young children) who have ended up hospitalized and critically ill due to exposure to tobacco smoke (often from their own family members) to wish those sentiments on every smoker out there who ever inflicted said smoke on others.
The evidence is in. Secondhand smoke seriously harms a LOT of people. This is not something we should put up with. The idea that we have to accept such assaultive behavior from others in the name tolerance is the height of lunacy.
Not all of them.
Not to mention movie scenes where you wonder how people managed to breathe. Example from a classic film noir:
In my high school (early '60s), not only was there no smoking anywhere in the school, but smoking was prohibited even on the other side of the street (on all 4 sides) from the school. I have no idea how they enforced that.
I graduated in 1979 and AFAIK there was no smoking age in my state.
I also went to a very odd set of schools. Two separate high schools, separate buildings, principals, teachers, sports teams, etc., but right next to each other. The smoking pit was in the middle between them, and it was an official smoking area established and sanctioned by the schools.
Odder still, you could have a class in the opposite school. I went to East High but sometimes had a class over in West High. This sucked because I only had 5 minutes between classes to huff it across the building of my school just to get to the other school, then have to hike across that schools building to get to class. I contemplated bringing my mini-bike in once just so I wouldn’t be tardy.
Read the first 20-ish posts but didn’t read the whole thread.
Like most of us I grew up when smoking was ubiquitous. At the grocery, at the doctor’s, in the car, on the plane, while cooking, while eating, etc. You name it, tobacco was smoldering while doing it.
Mom smoked from age 14-ish until her very last conscious moment on Earth. Yep, had a cig in her hand when the 3rd heart attack took her. Dad was an on-again-off-again smoker from before I was born but quit for good while I was in high school. Bro’s and I hated cig smoke and smoikng from a very early age.
As a kid we traveled by air a lot. As non-rev passengers we took whichever seats were available. In the Olden Dayes the smoking section was large and was still usually over-subscribed, so we usually sat in non-smoking. As the years wore on, the smoking section got smaller and smaller. Not that it made a difference; everything everywhere still stank.
I started working for the airline in 1989 just as smoking was prohibited on the planes. So although I never crewed a smoking flight, I did get to see the stained and gummed up outflow valves, the difference between the amount of gummy tar on the overhead panels in the first and last rows of coach, etc. All up close and personal. Disgusting. And I say that as a guy who very occasionally enjoys a good stogie to this day and 20+ years ago occasionally smoked a (tobacco) pipe for a couple years.
For about a year after smoking was prohibited in the cabin it was still allowed in the cockpit but discouraged. The idea was to give the nicotine fiend pilots time to wean themselves off. I’m told that smoking had already become pretty socially unacceptable in the cockpit a few years before but of course there were a few old irascible shit Captains who didn’t care what anybody else thought. Soon enough they’d been re-educated after the ban came into the cockpit.
Not long after that the last of the smoke-stained interiors had been replaced and the last of the ducting and valves had been de-sludged. Yecch!
I lived in Japan for the longest time, (and am still in Asia) so I had countless transpacific lights back when smoking was allowed. Once was on the row just ahead of the smoking section and I had a headache the entire time.
Japan had smoking cars on trains, including the bullet trains, and that seemed even worse to me. Less air circulation. Once I went somewhere with a customer who smoked and that was the last time I tried that.
When I became a sales manager for a Japanese company in the late 90s, the first change I made was the make the meetings smoke free. I wasn’t very popular, as you can imagine.
Yep!
I’m going to be 61 and am guessing that most people younger than 40 or 45 are not aware of how pervasive smoking was up until the late 80’s.
I remember people smoking in the doctor or dentist waiting rooms. My dad had a doctor who smoked and always had a pack in the pocket of his white lab coat. When I was a kid in the 60’s and 70’s and my parents took me to a wedding reception? The air would be completely blue from all the smoke. Having fancy ashtrays (some with built-in matching lighters) on an end table or cocktail table was the norm in a lot of homes. Cigarette machines were everywhere. I don’t know of anyone who ever bought matches for any reason. Every gas station and other businesses handed them out for free. Marketing reps would come in to night clubs and discos and hand out free packs. Even though I was only about 11 when they were banned I still remember when the airways were loaded with cigarette commercials. Watching sports on TV there would be more cig ads than beer commercials.
My Pop never smoked but my Ma did until he made her quit in the mid-70’s. I was a very light smoker until about 25 years ago when I gave it up. Have to admit I kind of miss going into a bar and having a few drags with a cold brew. There was something about that.
For several years back in the '80s, after I had quite smoking, I commuted in and out of NYC via the Long Island Railroad. They had special smoker cars. I remember rushing through the smoker car, holding my breath, until I could breathe the clean(er) air of a non-smoking car. Even when the smoker car was empty, the smoke-laden air and the nicotine-coated seats were oppressive.
Interesting. I figured that smoking bans in movie theaters would have predated the concern about second hand smoke simply because if I am sitting in the back rows I cannot see the screen if fifteen people are smoking in front of me with the smoke wafting up in front of the screen.
When I was a kid, I occasionally saw movies at a theater that had a “loge” section, where you were supposed to sit if you wanted to smoke during the movie. I remember it being in the back of the center section. My mom would sit in that area, while the kids would sit closer to the screen.
This was in Houston, Texas, in the early 70s (the last film I remember seeing there was Conquest of the Planet of the Apes), and it was a locally-owned theater that wasn’t part of a chain.
ETA: I found an interior photo of the theater. The smoking loge was on one side, at the back.
I remember smoking in movie theatres in the 80s- but the only people with smoke wafting in front of them were those sitting in the balcony, which was the smoking section. But that was in the days when what is a now a nine screen multiplex had one or maybe two screens.
I remember sitting in one for a short flight in Spain, but not them existing in other flights, though I am sure they were there. I also remember when smoking sections existed in US restaurants. In Japan smoking sections still exist, but whether there is an actual sliding door that separates it, or just some type of aisle will vary from place to place. There are increasingly more smoke free restaurants, but with the amount of smoking in Japan, I doubt smoking sections in restaurants will disappear any time soon.
//i\\
But some of them: from the same place:
“Evans, vice president of the chain, said smoking would be allowed only in the lobbies and lounges of theaters in cities where local regulations permit smoking in those areas.”
From my earliest childhood I remember theaters with “No Smoking” signs. This wasn’t to clear the air or as a courtesy to female patrons (who mostly didn’t smoke) – it was because local fire regulations didn’t permit smoking in assembly halls.
I don’t recall being offended by smoking in airplanes. Smoking was universal anyway, and airplanes were (and are) very well ventilated. Smoke in airplanes was less noticeable than smoke on trains, or at work, or school, or anywhere.
In Melbourne, the central section of trams was smoking – and there were no external doors. Cold in winter. The ends were non smoking. The trains were a random mix of smoking and non-smoking areas, (perhaps earlier there were no restrictions?), until sometime in the 70s or 80s when they started arranging the cars in fixed order. Up until then, because smokers never knew were the smoking sections would be on a train, they just got on and ignored the status.
The trains went totally non-smoking a couple of years later, but really, once they’d sorted out the carriage order, it ceased to be a problem for me.
When we first moved to Switzerland, people would leave the non-smoking office, call the elevator, light a cigarette, ride the elevator downstairs and then go outside. But only if they were going outside. Otherwise they would just stand right outside the office, as it was still permitted to smoke in the stairwells and coffee corners.
Last year I needed to use the bathroom at the car dealer, which was probably built in the 1960s. The bathroom stalls had ashtrays.
In Switzerland, smoking on trains was banned in 2005. They removed the partitions, but didn’t replace the carpeting and seats, so the trains still stunk from smoke for some time. Smoking was restricted on train platforms starting in 2019, but the rollout of the signage happened over the next year or so, coinciding with working from home. There are designated areas on the train platforms for smoking.
At Zurich airport there are designated rooms for smoking which have negative pressure, so all the smoke stays in the room and then exits the building. It’s possible to walk right next to the room, which has floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and not smell smoke. There are some outside areas as well, I believe, which also have places for taking one’s dog between security and boarding.
My Mom a lifelong smoker now in her mid 80’s and still smoking fondly recalls smoking on airplanes. Though she and Dad preferred to sit in non smoking, they’d take smoke breaks in the rear of the jet with dozens of other smokers. One flight the pilot announced that he had to break up the party in the back because the tail was starting to drag. Sounds a little fishy to me but that’s Moms story and she’s sticking with it.
Little known fact. The lavatories on airliners still have a little fold-out ashtray set into the inside of the door. It’s the same ashtray as was there in the 1960s and is still required to be there by FAA regulation.
The thinking being that that’s the least bad place for an illicit smoker to dispose of an illicit butt. Far better there than in the trash can full of used paper towels, etc. Or down the toilet where the solid cig filter can eventually hang up somewhere downstream. And we don’t want them disassembling the pop-up sink stopper / strainer to drop their butt down there either; that plumbing is even more cloggable.
Both negative pressure smoking lounges and dog-relieving areas are becoming more common at airports all across the US.
One especially interesting smoking lounge at Miami International is an open-air bar in the middle of the terminal building belonging to TGI Fridays. You’re welcome to smoke in there as long as you buy a drink & don’t linger. They cut a hole in the roof of the terminal building so you’re sitting in this 40’x40’ space with the open air 3+ stories above you and a semi-permanent tent over the square bar in the center. When it rains, patrons get wet. Fortunately snow in Miami is very rare.
Sadly they weren’t quite inventive enough to make the tent look like a tiki bar, for which Miami is justly famous. Ref this recent thread:
If you switch to satelite view & look for the red thing just alongside
Even nowadays, when a persistent gathering forms back at the aft lavs & galley area, the flight attendants working there often ask the pilots to do something, such as turn on the seatbelt sign, to disperse the crowd. This is more often an issue on long haul widebody flights, where more and more folks notice people standing in a gaggle and decide to join the fun.
Back in the days of smoking, there was no assurance the poor FAs assigned to the ass end were themselves smokers. And in many cases company rules precluded them smoking in the presence of customers, so even smokers could only longingly endure the second hand smoke, not get some of that sweet, sweet firsthand smoke into their eager lungs.
So some pilot coming up with some BS excuse about tail dragging to disperse the crowd at the FA’s request is certainly plausible.