I have been watching the show with growing interest. I like it becase it is a look back at mid-1960’s culture-by a group of driven people.
Anyway, I have a few questions:
-Drinking: every exec in the outfit seemed to have a private bar in their office-did people in the ad biz drink that much?
-Smoking: people seemed to light up all the time. By 1965, the terrible results of smoking were well known-did professionals smoke like this?
-The Secretaries: were they all schemeing, unscrupulous bitches?
I worked in the ad industry and as late as the 1980s I knew people who kept a bottle in their desk drawer, would drink heavily at lunch, etc. For that matter, the industry was pretty notorious for marijuana and cocaine use, as well.
As for smoking, a huge number of adults of any kind smoked in the 1960s. Smoking was allowed in offices. Hell, smoking was allowed in movie theaters, and my high school had a smoking lounge for seniors.
But secretaries were just people: some good, some bad, some ambitious, some not.
I worked in the ad industry through the last decade. Drinking during the day wasn’t as blatant at my agency as it is in the show (and 40+ years earlier), but it was certainly not uncommon. It likely didn’t help that my agency had both a major brewer and a major hard-spirits distiller as clients. 
Drinking at lunch did get cut back considerably after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, when it became far more difficult for certain people to consistently expense their three-martini lunches.
By 2000, when I joined the agency, smoking in office buildings was against Illinois state law…but it didn’t keep many of the high-ranking execs in my agency from smoking in their offices, with smokeless ashtrays. No one talked about it, no one publicly complained about it.
Yes, by the 1960s, the dangers of smoking were well-known (though probably not as widely believed then as now), but most of those execs in the show would have started smoking in the 1940s or 1950s, when it wasn’t…and, smoking was no easier to quit then than it is now (probably even harder then, with a lack of things like nicotine patches). Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, ashtrays were everywhere in public places, including the offices where my dad worked, and were very commonly used. I don’t think that the show is particularly unrealistic in that regard.
I was born in 1966, but I can remember when people smoked everywhere in the early 70s(and I can only assume that it was more common in the 60s). I remember ash trays in grocery stores and on grocery carts, I remember smoking on planes, in doctor office waiting rooms, everywhere. It was maybe the late 70s when things like no smoking sections started appearing in public places.
I graduated from college in 1970. Through the 70’s we always drank at lunch. I’m not aware of bars in offices because I worked first at a university then at techie place. But there was plenty of drinking.
As for smoking: absolutely yes. You may have seen on TV that newscasters smoked onscreen. Not making that up. In fact, in college, I had teachers who smoked during class while lecturing. I had one teacher who would light up and put his ciggie in the chalk tray. Then he’d pick up the chalk and put it to his lips or pick up the cig and try to write on the board with it. 
Well, *I *certainly was.
When my mom had my sister in 1971, she got to choose a smoking or non-smoking room.
I’ve seen pictures of offices in the West Wing during the Kennedy/Johnson years, the Mad Men era if you will, and ashtrays were omnipresent.
A previous thread that may be of interest: The realisticness of Mad Men? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
Remember, cigarette ads were only banned from TV on 1/1/71. While people knew about the perils of smoking in 1965 (and before) lots of people were in denial. I have some TV ads from the early 1950s built around how a particular singer loved to smoke, and others around no scratchy throat.
Not only were there ash trays back then there were matchbooks. My father had a gigantic glass bowl filled with matchbooks from all over, and I have a lot myself. They were still pretty available in the late 1970s; I haven’t seen any in years though. Every restaurant had an ashtray and a matchbook on the table, and your hotel room had them also.
DDB, by any chance?
Regarding the acceptance of smoking back in the day…
Back when I was in high school, mid seventies, I was in a group called Junior Achievement that met at a building in a strip mall. It was full smoking for both students (aged 14 or so to 18) and adult advisors. Our school never had a smoking area for students but probably 25-30% smoked. I live near a high school now and see many students walking to and from and none or nearly none are smoking, openly at least.
The place I got my hair cut in the eighties had ashtrays built into the armrests and stylists and clients smoked freely. I think they did have a decent exhaust system to deal with the smoke and hairspray/perm smells (it was the eighties!)
I entered the work force in 1982, and people smoked at their desks, although I’d guess that by that time maybe less than 25% of the people smoked.
It was a huge deal when they decided to have the smokers sit together (in an open office set up) in I’m going to guess 1985 or so, much less when they banned smoking at desks altogether.
Prior to that, there was some bitching about the smoke, but it was just considered part of the environment. This was before studies on second-hand smoke, of course.
My mother had my older brother in '72. She was advised by her doctor not to try quiting smoking because the stress would be bad for the baby. Several of her older female relatives (not including my grandmother) advised her to keep it up to keep her weight gain under control. Apparently her actual delivery was about halfway between the one Betty Draper had and a modern one. My grandmother was allowed in the room with her, but her husband was not. He went to a bar instead.
No, small independent and regional agencies. But we could drink and smoke just as well in the Midwest as those fancy Madison Avenue types!
As others have said, cigarette smoking was still very common through the 60s and 70s, despite the health warnings. To see some hard numbers, here’s a graph of cigarette usage for American adults, going back to 1965. The portion of adults who smoke declines from about 42% then to 19% now.
Others have mentioned their own “cigarette memories”, so I’ll add a couple. I remember, in the 70s, that even non-smokers would keep ash trays in their homes — perhaps on the coffee table, or end tables, or tucked away in a kitchen drawer —to accommodate guests when they visited. Many of your friends and relatives would be smokers, after all.
I remember McDonald’s had ash trays out on their tables. Little cheap ones made of pressed metal, I think, about the size of a coaster. It might have been “fast food” they were serving, but apparently smokers weren’t expected to go that long without lighting up.
Hell, I worked for a small-town Ohio newspaper in 1988-89 and the newsroom was “smoking optional.” Several reporters and the editor-in-chief puffed away. My contact lenses got crudded over incredibly fast. I still wonder how many years of my life I lost by working there.
I joined the faculty of a state university in 1987, and people smoked in their offices, including some larger office areas that were shared by multiple employees. Somewhere around 1990 indoor smoking was banned campus-wide.
When I had a baby via C-section in 1987, there was a ‘smoking lounge’ down the hall of the maternity ward. But that was the 80’s, in the 60’s, yes, grasshopper, people smoked like chimneys everywhere. Ashtrays were everywhere. My parents had a big silver metal one, and in the center were two storks with open beaks where you could stick your burning butt while your hands were busy elsewhere, perhaps making a highball with soda and Four Roses whiskey.
As for scheming bitch secretaries, you’ll have to point out to me which of them you see on Mad Men. Back in the olden days they were routinely dismissed as a sort of office furniture you felt free to hit on, sexually harrassed office machines. No wonder some of them became unscrupulous, scheming bitches! Working for chicken feed, called “the girl”, ogled and treated like dummies - the underclass has ALWAYS tried to take advantage and get ahead, since caveman days. Looks were super-important, and there was always a new, fresh, young group direct from Katherine Gibbs secretarial school to displace the troublesome and aging. There were some old, experienced office battleaxes who held on to their jobs for decades, “career gals” whose whole lives centered around the boss and the office. (And of course, it was who you knew, and who you had the goods on.)
I grew up in a household where both of my parents smoked (I never picked up the habit). I never realized it back then, but now, when I go back to Wisconsin to visit my parents, I can smell the smoke the moment I walk into the house – and when I get home after a visit, the first thing I do is throw all of my clothes in the wash. I do wonder if those early years in that smoky environment will cause problems for me down the road.
Don’t forget to put the finishing touches on your Jello mold salad before the guests arrive.
Might need more whiskey first though.