Yes, this is for a school presentation, and I would like to enlist the help of Dopers.
I came of age in the early 1990s. At that time, smoking was still pretty common in public. Of course you could smoke in bars, and restaurants asked you “smoking or non-smoking”.
You could smoke at the mall (in the common area, not stores that I recall). The hospitals let patients smoke in their rooms, so long as the guy next to him wasn’t dying of some horrible breathing related problem. Even then you could smoke in the waiting areas.
Bingo halls, community events, at your desk at work, hell you name it, you could smoke there. Two years before I started high school, there was a smoking area outside that was set up for students.
So, I’m trying to gather some info, and would appreciate some help. I guess the easiest way would be to do this:
Pick the earliest year you remember from these: 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990
Tell me which state you were in at the time. Then tell me what places you know prohibited smoking, and what places allowed smoking that would seem crazy by today’s standards.
Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, the only restriction on smoking I know of was in hospitals around oxygen, and on planes during takeoff and landing. As in, you couldn’t smoke near where somebody was using oxygen, or while the plane was taking off and landing. How smoking would be hazardous in the latter case I don’t know, particularly since after two hours of people in the smoking section (oh, there’s another one… there were parts of the plane where it was okay to smoke, like the circulation systems wouldn’t spread it throughout the entire plane)… anyway, after a couple hours of smoking, the entire plane was pretty much filled with cigarette smoke, and making people put out the cigarettes during landing may have just kept them from stabbing themselves in the eye with a cigarette or setting their beard on fire with the lighter, rather than lessening some smoke-related danger.
In the 60s and 70s, smoking was prohibited in elevators, the situations Ethilrist mentioned, and some public transportation like city buses. I grew up in Minneapolis, and there was even a public school (for the JDs) that allowed the students to smoke in class. As a teenager, I smoked in the Juvenile Center and the county reform school. I don’t remember anyone smoking in the library, either, and smoking was forbidden (vehemently) in movie theaters. Other than places like next to gas pumps and open buckets of kerosene, I can’t think of anywhere else that prohibited smoking.
Now my entire state bans smoking in public buildings, which made the bar owners really grumpy and inspired a great surge in theater groups in the state. (There was a loophole in the law that actors in plays were allowed to smoke while acting.)
In the 60s and 70s smoking was the norm. People who didn’t smoke were in the minority. I never really attended church, but I highly doubt smoking was allowed there. The teachers’ lounge at school was always smoke filled.
People smoked in buses, on trains, planes, taxi cabs, cars, etc. There was no escaping it. I fondly remember screaming down the highway, not wearing a seat belt, while both my parents puffed away with the windows rolled up. That’s just the way it was. Restaurants didn’t even have non-smoking areas, because just about everyone smoked! It’s interesting too see the movie Apollo 13 and see all the Nasa engineers smoking at their stations.
As a child in the early 1970s I caught the train to and from school every day. Carriage numbers 2, 3, 6 and 7 on the eight carriage trains were smoking carriages. Even then, as a seven-year old, I avoided those carriages because of the stink.
And when I started full-time work in 1985, people were still allowed to smoke in the office, although it was forbidden shortly thereafter.
In the early 60s you could smoke in college class rooms provided you brought your own ashtray. College bookstores sold six-packs of little tinfoil ashtrays for the purpose. An empty shoe polish can was the preferred ashtray. College libraries had smoking lounges.
College women were taught smoking etiquette. For instance, smoke only when seated and don’t flip the butt away and don’t talk with a cigarette in your mouth. Zippo lighters were a exclusively male conceit. Women used cute little lighters or stood around waiting for some gallant to light them up.
Army K-rations came with a five pack of cigarettes, usually Green Circle Lucky Strikes. C-rations included a book of so-called water resistant matches. There were butt cans in the barracks, a two pound coffee can with a couple inches of water in it fastened to the support posts by brackets.
Other people have mostly covered it. Back before the 90’s, it was generally publicly acceptable to through you cigarette butts most anywhere including out of car windows. People still do it but it is often frowned upon now.
A big difference between the 80’s and now is legal smoking ages. I don’t smoke now but I did in high school in Louisiana starting about 1988. Twelve year olds, hell even 10 year olds, could legally by cigarettes. If the clerk frowned, you could just say that you are buying them for your mother which may very well be true. They started pushing laws against that to capture all states by the early 1990’s.
I was struck by these changes when I watch Mad Men or Wall Street. Both feature plenty of in-office smoking (cigarette and pipe). I’ve never been a fan of cigarettes, but I LONG to be able to smoke my pipe in my office or classroom.
I distinctly remember my father smoking in movie theaters in the 1960s, where the theaters had thoughtfully provided ashtrays in the seat arms for patrons’ convenience.
The only two places where I absolutely don’t remember seeing adults smoking were church and the public library – and for all I know there may have been a reading room with ashtrays in the library.
In the late seventies the places I got my hair cut were full smoking for stylists and clients with ashtrays in the armrests as kunilou mentioned above. These were typically uni-sex type places, not old school barber shops.
As a kid in the sixties and seventies, smoking was pretty much everywhere, except around oxygen in hospitals and at the gas pumps if you got outside of the car, before self-serve stations were common. Although you couldn’t light up while watching a movie, you could smoke in the lobby. It also wasn’t uncommon to see people light up in the waiting room of the doctor or dentist.
In high school in the seventies, students had a smoking area in one of the parking lots. Teachers had a smoking lounge. Restaurants and airplanes were just beginning to have smoking / non-smoking sections.
Working the assembly line and in other areas of an automotive manufacturer in the eighties, we could smoke on the line, in the breakrooms, restrooms, locker room and if you worked at a desk, at your desk. In the early nineties, that was restricted to a smoker’s breakroom. That was also about the time that you began to see smokers standing outside at the hospitals and courthouses.
This was my experience in Indiana.
Moving to Tennessee in the mid-nineties, I have never worked anywhere where there were any indoor smoking areas, but then again, I’ve always worked in urban areas. When I lived in a very small town about fifty miles outside of Nashville, in tobacco growing country, you would still see folks with a lit cig walking around in grocery stores and inside the courthouse (although I have my doubts about the legality of that).
Smoking has been restricted in public buildings except those limited to the 21 and up crowd since 2006 or 2007. Most of the year, it’s not an issue, as our weather allows enjoyable patio dining.
Not much to add except I always get a kick out of these B&W movies where the doctor walks out of the operating room then lights up a cig. Man that’s classic.
I remember this part in the 70s and 80s as well. Neither one of my parents ever smoked, but they kept ashtrays in the cupboards with the dishes just in case a smoking guest would visit.
The idea that you would tell someone that they couldn’t smoke in your house wasn’t even thought of. It would seem inhospitable.
I would put it equal to in modern times telling someone that they couldn’t use your restroom because you just clean it and that you didn’t “like the smell” of strange fecal matter. The guest would think you were crazy and rude to boot.
Maybe I’m remembering a different 80s, but in Ohio at that time, there was no smoking whatsoever anywhere in a hospital, and rare was the nonsmoker who would allow others to smoke in their home (though you could of course step outside for a cig, if you wanted). Likewise, a person who flicked a butt out of the car window was considered a boorish pig and a litterer (though enforcement was nonexistant).
I was ten years old in 1950 but I’ll take a shot. I don’t remember smoking being prohibited anywhere although it must have been in certain chemical intensive environments. I suppose there were houses where the occupants might have requested no smoking but I don’t remember one. So far as I recall, in public you could smoke where you damn well pleased; I remember people smoking in elevators.
If I go forward to the mid 1950s, smoking was prohibited on high school grounds and in public buses. Both rules were broken more than they were observed. Otherwise, people smoked as recounted above.
Growing up in the early 60s everyone smoked. It was probably a bit less prevalent than in the 50s; the first Surgeon General’s report was issued in 1964. Prior to that, smoking was considered routine. Even pregnant women would smoke.
It wasn’t allowed in high school (hence “Smoking in the Boy’s Room”) but primarily as a discpline issue than a health issue. You could smoke if you went outside.
In college, they had foil ashtrays in every classroom. And kds often made ashtrays in school to give to their parents.
You smoked on planes (once they took off) and on trains (though there were non-smoking areas). Hell, if you go back far enough, you’ll find they even allowed smoking on the **Hindenbergp/b] (in a special room with positive pressure so the hydrogen couldn’t leak in).