I really started using public transit after my car died in the mid 90s. By then Chicago had banned smoking on buses and el trains and subways.
But I keep thinking it must’ve been awful. OK granted, there probably wasn’t air conditioning so they had open windows. I do remember not all the trains and buses in Chicago had A/C when I first started riding, though I think they all do now.
So if the windows were open it probably wasn’t as bad.
So to those people old enough to remember when you could smoke on public transit, (bus, el, subway, trains etc), how bad was it? Was it just something you got used to? And if you remember, when did they stop it?
And is there any place where you can still smoke on public transit? I imagine there must be some countries or cities that still allow it
It was bothersome to me in planes, where the air is pretty stagnant anyway. Eventually they made smoking sections in the rear of the plane, and one time, guess where the only remaining seat was where I had to sit? In the smoking section. It was disgusting.
My Dad smoked, so I was used to the smell and honestly it didn’t bother me too much. What was really shocking was when the bans started - now then you could really tell the difference and you realized how nasty things used to be.
The biggest difference for me was not on public transportation, but in bars and restaurants. Everything suddenly tasted so much better.
Actually, my dad worked as a CTA busdriver beginning in 1967, and even back then, you weren’t allowed to smoke on busses or el’ trains. I remember the very prominent signs posted on the busses saying, “No smoking or spitting.” I remember thinking, “Spitting?” Of course they meant chewing tobacco, but my sheltered little seven-year-old self didn’t know about chewing tobacco.
Just spitting mucus was probably frowned upon too.
Air conditioning? Piffle. You must be a youngster. I can remember the little mechanical coin changers that busdrivers used to carry at their belts. During summer, I used to ride with my dad back and forth on his route, and he would let me fill the changer and punch transfers at the end of the line. Loads of fun. My dad started “Take Your Daughter to Work” Day years in advance.
It was horrible when people smoked on trains. I caught the train to school each day. It was a 45 minute trip each way and I used to get out of the train reeking of smoke.
I grew up in the '60s and '70s and don’t remember ever seeing cigarettes being smoked on trains, buses, or planes.
I do remember smoking sections of restaurants though, and always said to myself as the disgusting aroma wafted into the supposed non-smoking sections where I sat, “What’s the point?”
I used to love travelling to work, heading upstairs for a smoke (As in ‘Found my way upstairs and had a smoke…’ from Hard Days Life) but everyone used to have the windows open even in winter so it wan’t too bad. I can remember flying Aeroflot from London to Thailand when they still had smoking, that actually was pretty awfull to be honest. Smoking on trains in the UK eventually got relegated to a single carridge, that you really didn’t want a seat in but you know people popped in and out on the journey. I remember it stank, badly, and I smoked heavily so it must have been bad.
From my earliest memories (going back to the 40s) trolleys, buses, and subways were non-smoking. So were movie theaters, although I think there areas in the lobby you could smoke. On trains, there were smoking and non-smoking cars. Airplanes were the big exception. Supposedly, they had smoking and non-smoking sections, but how can you keep the smoke in the smoking area? When Air Canada banned smoking on all short flights (up to two hours, IIRC) all the smokers swore they would boycott Air Canada. I imagine a few did. It didn’t take long for the others to appreciate it so much that when banned smoking on all flights, there was nary a whisper.
Once my wife and I went to a jazz club where they supposedly had a non-smoking section. They did, but it was in a balcony where all the smoke collected. It was also away from the music. We never went back. This is the other side of the coin of all those people who complained that bars and restaurants would lose business if they didn’t allow smoking. Not so’s you’d notice.
I was flying back and forth between my parents in the early '80s and remember smoking sections in airplanes. Every seat had a little ashtray in the arms, even in the front of the plane. I don’t remember if it was gross, both because I was a kid and because my mom smoked so I was used to it.
If you want to remember what it was like when people could smoke in resturaunts all you have to do is go to Vegas (I think…there were still smoking areas in casinos and bars there a couple of years ago.)
I remember smoking on an airplane, just once. It must have been in the late 1980s, or early 1990s. It’s really unthinkable now. I’m pretty sure I have smoked on a Greyhound bus in the same era. “Smoking or non-smoking?” in restaurants seemed to last much longer, or more likely, I was in restaurants more often than travelling.
In BC where I am, smoking has been banned in public places for quite some time. You now rarely see ashtrays, even outside. You can’t smoke three metres from a building entry in my municipality. Some places like the nearest mall to my office, do not allow smoking on the premises whatsoever. I’m not sure how that works for someone smoking in their vehicle as they enter the mall parking lot and park.
My mother remembered smoking in university while in class, students and professors both.
Anyway, things are much cleaner and nicer now. You didn’t know how bad it was until it was prohibited. I cannot imagine working in an office with a smoker at the next desk or cubicle.
I never thought about it at all. Smoking was something ‘everyone’ did. Non-smokers were in the minority and no one really thought twice about people smoking. It was just something that happened.
Smoking was banned on buses in Sydney in the mid-70s from memory. I think smoking carriages were allowed for longer than that. Non-smoking carriages had always been around so it was definitely possible to avoid the smokers. Ditto on the older, double decker buses where smoking was only allowed upstairs.
It amazes me now just how accepting the vast majority of people were about the ubiquity of smoking.
I was a non-smoker until well after the bans were established (and am again, now.)
I don’t recall ever being annoyed by smoking in public places.
I do remember the earnest belief that the smell of Indian food being cooked (cumin, specifically) was the most noxious, suffocating, offensive odour that one might ever expect to encounter. I remember passing houses at dinnertime (well back from the sidewalk, in the open air) and feeling like it was a gauntlet to be run - sincerely hoping that I wouldn’t be overcome by it and vomit, right there on the sidewalk.
This was of course completely ridiculous, and it is clear to me now just how subjective my experience of that stimulus was, and the degree to which hysterical and xenophobic ideas which I’d picked up from my environment were colouring my perception. I am reminded of this when otherwise intelligent people launch into coughing fits or cover their faces went they get within ten feet of someone smoking outdoors, or when I read complaint letters (strata management) from people who ask us to compel other owners to refrain from smoking on their deck, (300 meters away from the writer’s window) because it is making their unit unsafe and unfit for habitation, and banging on about how they are going to take it to the Human Rights Tribunal (!) if we didn’t take steps to remedy the situation.
There were allocated non-smoking and smoking carriages on Sydney trains. I think 2, 3, 6 and 7 used to be the smoking ones. But the distinction wasn’t all that well enforced, and you would often get smokers in all carriages.
Slightly curious- did people back in the day have a diminished sense of smell from all the cigarette smoke exposure? I ask because I’m from California, where you’re basically forbidden to smoke if you enter the state line, and if we catch you we taunt you and spank you with cancer-riddled cadaver lungs
When I go to Nevada to the casinos the constant smell of smoke is overpowering- everything reeks of cigarettes. I’m guessing the people who smoke don’t notice it, and if you could smoke everywhere, did that mean people’s sense of smell was diminished?
Mine never did, (diminish that is). It bothered me just as much no matter what. I spent several years working in a little bar attached to a Chinese restaurant. I should have gotten “used to it” but it just got worse as time went on.
I can smell it if I get into an elevator that a smoker previously occupied.
