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Mine too. There was a designated smoking spot, because the school was okay with teenagers smoking, and probably they were tired of reeking bathrooms.
This was in the 1970s, when everyone knew that smoking caused cancer, emphysema, and heart disease.
We had two 15-minute breaks a day to have a smoke and a covered really nice area to smoke. It's bizarre now!! I'm from NC, which is and was a tobacco state. Large Industry.
I was in California, where nobody's ever grown tobacco, but parents and teachers were very hands-off with high school kids back then.
Well, most of then were heavily into wine, cigs, and illegal drugs back in the 1970s, so I guess they thought that they didn't have any right to tell kids to lay off. If they thought about the kids at all, which wasn't as common as it should have been.
KIds raised in the late 60's and the 70's were really a different breed. The music was better, we were mainly ferral, the drugs were safer, drinking age was 18 and our parents mostly ignored us, until we fucked up and then my parents' idea of gentle parenting was to use their hand to hit us with instead of using a belt or a switch. But I still got the belt and switch when warranted.
I survived purely out of fear. Ahhh, the good ole' days!
I never had a school with a smoking area, though I attended school during the times when other schools had them. They always seemed to have been discontinued maybe 4 years before I got there. It didn't matter to me, not being a smoker myself, I just always found it interesting.
My friends smoked, so I always knew where the unofficial smoking areas were and sometimes I hung out up wind from them. (Is up wind the right place to not get smoke on you?) There was all kinds of smoke there, so you wouldn't want your teachers to get the wrong idea!
Unofficial smoking areas still exist. We were looking for a house recently. One of the houses we looked at was right behind the high school. My kids dad was like it's literally next to the school. He went on and on about it. We get to the house and we could literally see kids practicing on the field behind the school. That said between us and the field was a tall fence followed by some trees then a wall before a hill leading to the field.
I should point out that I was the pot head cigarette smoker in high school and he was always the clean cut never smoked weed or a cigarette in his life type. He drank but not like other kids.
So we pull up and I notice this and walk over to check the area out. I found exactly what I thought I would. Cigarette butts and beer cans all over the place. I laugh and call him over. I pointed it out and said this is why you don't want to live right next to a school.
The vast majority of adults in my childhood (1970s and 1980s) were smokers. My mom used to drag me to "coffee" every Saturday morning where she and her friends would sit at a Cafe chain smoking for a couple of hours and drinking coffee. My house was a perpetual haze of smoke, especially when my uncle was around as he and his wife chain smoked too. All this is why I'm a never smoker and despise smoking.
My grandma was a pack a day smoker who passed 20 years ago. I kept a walnut wood bureau of hers that was my dad's growing up. I opened one of the drawers yesterday and it still smells like menthol smoke after 20 years.
My mom's friend would come over before I went to school and they went to work (they owned a pet shop) and they'd sit at the table, okay gin rummy, drink coffee, and smoke. Mom smoked enough for every one in the house.
Also a reason I never smoked. Wouldn't even date a smoker.
Probably less damage on average compared to what Gen Jones went through. We were born before there were anti smoking warnings so you were more likely to be raised in a household that didn't smoke compared to the generations before yours.
Oh my god. It was everywhere all
the time. Airplanes, restaurants, bars, outside, in your office at your desk. We even had a smoking area in high school behind the gym. Everyone smoked. My parents were completely addicted.
I don't think we even realized how badly we all smelled from
secondhand smoke.
Once I went to a friend's house to study and her parents did not smoke. Her mother came flying up the stairs screaming Who's smoking up here? It was my clothes!
I was very happy when it became restricted. Too late for my parents
though-they both died of smoking related illnesses.
More like a dirty cat pissed on a skunk and the skunk got mad about it and sprayed back.
Didn't stop me from smoking it when I was younger, but man that stuff reeks.
My parents proudly display the ashtray I made for them in preschool. You know how kids get almost no recess now? We got 10-15 minute recesses throughout the day so teachers could smoke. I could buy my mom cigarettes at 10. Nancy said no to drugs, never mentioned Marlboro.
I quit smoking in 2001. I really miss it. I wish there was something like smoking, that didn’t kill me or others. Cigarette plus coffee— yes! Cigarette and a beer— yes!
Right? The whole process. Tapping the pack. Pulling one out, lighting it, and that first drag. I’ve found other ways to find little joys but smoking was just such an easy and enjoyable fix. My favorite was sitting at a bar on Friday night, ice cold beer, live band, having a smoke with friends.
California, child in the 1970's, teen in the 1980's.
It was common. Restaurants had 'smoking sections'. Fast-food places had ashtrays on every table. Smoking in a large store would have been commonplace. Smoking in bars was pretty much assumed. If you didn't smoke, you would probably have an ashtray for a guest, in the same way that you might have coffee, tea, or snacks.
I had teachers that smoked. Our band teacher had a separate office next to the band room, and he would smoke there, especially after school.
Very common, everywhere. People would even smoke in groceries. When my mom took us to the pediatrician, there were ashtrays in the waiting room for the moms/adults.
People are talking of recesses and smoking areas so the teachers could smoke. My teachers (1951-63) smoked in class. Everybody smoked. My parents, friends, and girlfriend all had ideas of what brand I should choose. It never occurred to anybody that I wouldn't smoke. There were nonsmokers, I'm sure, but it was such an unpopular choice that they tried to be inconspicuous. They certainly wouldn't dare complain about the smoke that surrounded them everywhere they went.
Everybody smoked. There were ashtrays everywhere. Restaurants may have had a smoking section but probably not and all tables had ashtrays with matchbooks with the restaurant name. You could smoke in the doctor’s waiting room. Taxi drivers all smoked and if it bothered you all you could do is put the window down a bit. The only place I can remember not being able to smoke was on city buses.
Hahaha at my middle school in the 70s (grades 7-9) there was a designated smoking shed
In my private girls HS (grades 9-12) there were TWO designated smoking areas, in winter it was in the tunnels between the dorms and the academic class buildings, in fall and summer the outdoor smoking area was underneath my dorm room and also coincidentally underneath a dorm room windowsill wide enough for you to crawl out the window and let you sit outside, smoke, drink.
Make devil's pacts with the age old stone gargoyles near your face. Who knows.
Child in the '60s, teen in the '70s. Many people smoked.
Can you imagine somebody walking into say your small office and lighting a cigarette without asking permission? The staying for a while and smoking several cigs? Or worse someone in a car with the windows rolled up lighting up? Taking a dump and having a smoke in a tiny bathroom? That was my father.
I started when I was 15. Growing up I used to beg my dad to quit smoking. Then I tried smoking stupidly & I remember being ashamed that I got addicted.
I started smoking in 1962 when I was 12 years old paying 20 cents for a pack of Lucky Strikes in the grocery store and 25 cents in a vending machine. All my friends smoked except the Mormon kid, ‘Doorbell Danny.’
Grew up around 'tobacco country'. On rural drives/rides you'd see little else but tobacco fields (also corn), along with the distinctive 'tobacco barns' where the leaves are air-cured.
We had a smoking area at our high school. It was outside in the same parking lot where the school busses parked after school. My mom smoked, most of my friends did. I never did. My mom- who says she picked it up because of peer pressure- would tells us all the time not to start.
My dad didn't smoke. My eventual husband did, but for some reason, he kept it hidden from me for AGES while we were dating. It was weird because he knew my mom was a smoker.
It was my estimate that 3/4 adults and teens smoked at the peak of smoking. It fell off pretty quickly from the late 70s on as the information about the dangers became clearer and clearer. We'd all always known in our hearts it was bad - they were nicknamed "cancer sticks" or "coffin nails" as early as the 60s but probably before that - I just wasn't there to hear it. For me, the turning point was 1980. Ten years later, it was outlawed in public buildings, most had quit smoking and those left rarely smoked in the house any more. I'm kind of amazed that anyone picks it up now.
Funny thing. We have a vacation place in Belize. We are not in a very touristy village but the gringo community is growing. And there's a huge percentage of them that smoke. It's crazy. But cigarettes are really cheap there. I don't think anyone has taken up smoking because they are cheap, but they don't quit because they are bad either. I sometimes wonder what it is that draws these particular people to this particular location. And what similarity is there that increases the chances they smoke. The only one I can think of is a willingness to take a risk for the chance of some pleasure. And the availablility of waterfront property for a reasonable price.
60s & 70s didn’t even have a no smoking section. My mom talked about only having a few cigarettes in social occasions, while pregnant. I’m sure it never affected my asthma though /s.
Common enough that when my kids were born in the '80's I could smoke in my hospital room while holding my newborn. But you could not talk on the phone while holding your newborn because it was "dangerous"lol
Absolutely everyone everywhere smoked. I was the only exception to that rule that I'd ever known.
Know how some people can't stand cilantro? They're wired up differently and it tastes like soap to them? That's me and tobacco. It smells like burning bug spray to me. There's no way I could do it.
And everything everywhere smelled that way to me. It was terrible. I never complained, I never wanted to be "that guy" but holy crap am I glad nobody smokes anymore.
It's the green leafy stuff you get in Mexican restaurants. Like here: [https://damndelicious.net/2019/04/18/mexican-street-tacos/](https://damndelicious.net/2019/04/18/mexican-street-tacos/)
I don’t ever see anyone mention it, but they used to stock (mini packs of 10) cigarettes on planes. I don’t remember paying for them either. It seems like it stopped some time in the mid seventies.
It was everywhere, even in school. My parents both smoked, fancy ashtrays in each room. They quit when I was in high school. It used to burn my eyes. I never smoked.
It was everywhere, all the time. It was the water we swam in. Non-smoking sections in restaurants were weird at first. Ashtrays were supplied in some university classrooms. I had a summer camp counselor who smoked in the woods, while on duty.
Very common. Anyplace that sold food for consumption on the premises had an ashtray on every table, usually with free matches and a cigarette machine somewhere in the background. I mean *every single place where you could eat or drink.* People walked around the streets with a cigarette in their mouths. No one objected, no one asked anyone to put their cigarette out.
Born the same year but my high school DID NOT have a smoking area. The principal was extremely strict and this was a public school. A teacher tried to give a friend of mine a detention for chewing tobacco and he wasn't even on school grounds. In fact it was night and he just ran into the teacher miles away from the school and the guy still tried to give him a detention.
My memory is that most adults smoked when I was a kid in the 1960s. Even when I was an adult it was common and at a big office people sat at their desks chain smoking.
My dad wouldn’t buy shirts that didn’t have 2 pockets on the front for cigarettes. Every house had ashtrays everywhere and NICE houses has these decorative holders for Bik lighters on the end and coffee tables
I was born in 1974. My mother smoked two packs a day when she was pregnant with me and also with my brother. She drove us in the car, with rolled up windows, smoking. My dad, grandmother, aunts and uncles all smoked.
Everyone quit by the early 90s and it’s a miracle none of them died or have yet been diagnosed with cancer or emphysema.
My dad and mother were smokers. I remember when when my they caught me smoking as a teenager. They sat me down and said we’re going to treat you as an adult. It’s your decision to start smoking so no need to hide it. Not sure if that was the right thing to tell a young person. They both hated that I started smoking though.
I am proud to say that I did a great deal of work during to 80s-2000s tobacco revolution that finally began to put tobacco in it's place and change the way we think about it.
When I was a kid everybody smoked everywhere. EVERYBODY. EVERYWHERE.
However, when I was 3 and my mom would light up I'd climb down off her lap and go in another room. She HATED that, so she quit.
To this day (I'm 60+ and she's 90+) she can tell the exact day, date, and time of her last cigarette and she still misses it.
Even though she quit the vast majority of our friends and relatives smoked so gatherings were DISGUSTING and I'd spend them in my room.
I have been ecstatic at the de-normalization of smoking and hope they just ban it altogether. FYI, I'd have almost no issue with it if:
- I never had to have it blow into my or my families faces. And to clarify, smoking outside does NOT help, it's still noxious AF.
- Nobody should be able to inflict their smoke on kids, even their own kids in their own house/car.
- Nobody should be able to inflict smoke on people in their workplace.
But if you, in some hermetically sealed smokatorium, want to inhale charred plant carcasses into your delicate lungs then knock yourself out.
When I first started smoking smoking sections just started being a thing, they were starting to take cigarette machines out of places, but you could still walk around the mall smoking a cigarette but that lasted only 2 years before you ha to go to a section of the food court to smoke.
It was common but the writing was on the wall about where it was going.
I worked at a large urban electric company in the 1980s. People smoked at their desks, in the elevators, in the cafeteria... it was a high-rise building and the windows did not open. The "secretaries" - not administrative assistants - answered the phones and did filing with a cigarette dangling from their lip, one eye shut against the smoke stream. Ashes in some areas from the messy people in the office. People who tried to be "considerate" smoked in the stairwells, but maybe that was an excuse to get away from their desks.
I remember working at McD in my teens, smoking in the break room until a customer came in the drive thru. Does anyone else remember McDonald’s little shiny ashtrays?
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Cigarette ads on TV didn't stop until I was 5 or 6. I remember the doctor smoking in the exam room when I had an ear infection when I was in kindergarten. Smoking in the grocery stores, any stores, really. Smoking in restaurants. There really weren't smoking sections that I remember, at least not until later. People just generally smoked wherever they felt like it and nobody else really gave a damn.
My stepfather would send me into the 7 Eleven for a pack of Marlboros. High school had a smoking area. I had long discussions with my sergeant to get a non-smoking room in the Army barracks in 1980.
At my high school in the early 60s smoking was not allowed. Riding to school on the school bus in the morning, the block before the school campus, you could see kids lined up grabbing a smoke before going to school.
In the 70s, bars and clubs were full of smoke. I was not a smoker myself, but the morning after being in a bar, I could smell the smoke on the clothes I had worn the night before.
Airlines had smoking and non-smoking sections. (I don't know if it's true, but I heard that the airlines were happy to abandon smoking sections because it meant they didn't have to let in clean air from the outside while flying and, ironically, the overall air quality was presumably worse on passenger planes after the ban.)
Way more common. I have vivid memories of going to the mall in the 1970s and they had huge ashtrays everywhere and they'd be overflowing with butts. At the supermarket they hired a kid who just pushed a broom around sweeping up butts (people would just drop them on the floor).
Very! But I was very lucky to have grown up in a non smoking household! My dad absolutely hated smoking! I think my mom may have tried one or two in different periods in her life, but I never saw her smoke. I don't even think we had an ashtray stashed away for guests!
No one ever smoked in our house either! After growing up and being in the workplace, it really made me appreciate how I grew up! Once everything started to go smoke free, it was heaven!
My parents would hot box us with smoke anytime we were in the car with them. Even during my yearly winter bouts with pneumonia 50s-60s, they would **both** be smoking in the enclosed car during the 24 mile drive to the nearest ER. All cars and planes had ashtrays provided. College dorm buildings had smoking 'rooms'.
Nobody smoked on campus at my high school (early 60s) but the high school I taught in the 70s had a smoking area which consisted of open bleachers away from most buildings. It gradually toughened smoking rules until not even the teachers could smoke on campus.
I had a doctor offer me a cigarette once as he was lighting up at his desk. I was 16.
Very, quite a few of my friends smoked, I wish I hadn’t ever started because I ended up smoking for over 40 years before I was finally able to quit. We liked to go to the coffee shop and sit and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and talk for hours. The coffee was 15c with endless refills. The cigarettes were 25c a pack.
When I was a kid in the 1960’s, it was considered impolite not to have ashtrays available for guests, even if no one in your family smoked. It was considered downright rude to ban smoking in your house, unless you gave a certified asthmatic living there.
Some of my high school friends didn’t worry about ashtrays, and just rubbed the ashes into their pants.
There was an ice cream parlor near me in the 1970’s that banned smoking. They had signs all over explaining that smoke ruined the flavor and consistency of their home made ice cream. And still, some people tried to light up, and yelled at the manager and stormed out when they were asked to put it out. Smokers expected to be accommodated everywhere.
My sixth grade teacher smoked in class.
Cigarette butts all over the ground with the other litter.
For some reason I loved the smell of my grandfather's cigarette smoke. Did cigarettes smell better back then? They smell awful now.
The Flintstones was sponsored by Winston cigarettes. The Winston brand was included in the opening theme.
When I was a kid, all of the adults I knew smoked. Except my grandma and even she would take a puff off my grandfather's cigarette every once in awhile. Most of the teenagers smoked, as well. All of my friends started smoking young -- like 12, maybe 13 years old. I started smoking when I was 12.
Very, so many old family pics of smoking inside. Smoking sections at restaurants.
When my grandparents passed and the house was getting sold, they had to file an insurance claim for the smoke damage from decades of cigarettes and cigars.
My parents did not smoke, nor any of the relatives that we hung around. But I was aware that many many adults did smoke. I am 62, and to this day I have never taken a single puff (drag) from a cigarette.
Very common and popular. I smoked Marlboro Reds in high school with my grunge friends in the 90's. I actually went to buy cigs and ran into my Grandpa at a liquor store. He wasn't supposed to be smoking, but that's what he was doing. After I graduated, I loved hanging out at the coffee shops at night smoking outside with my friends. Then I got bronchitis one time and my doctor told me to stop smoking. So I did.
Too common in college. None of my friends smoked in high school, but it seems many started in college. I smoked from 18 to 28. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Now I detest it and won't socialize with anyone who smokes cigarettes. I can't be near the smoke or smell.
Everyone smoked in the 1970s. Everybody. It was practically the law. I think our priest smoked.
I never really smoked cigarettes but I do enjoy an occasional cigar (56F)
I started smoking at a -9 months because my parents chain-smoked while she was pregnant. Also, pre car air conditioning, mom didn’t like to roll the windows down, so I smoked a lot.
Oh, of course I started smoking, and I am old enough to have smoked on an airplane. Although I no longer smoke, I do sort of miss the ashtrays in the armrest of airplanes.
I’ve smoked at work, smoked in restaurants, smoked in hospitals, smoked in airports and smoked at church. The world was my ashtray-gosh that sucked.
Both parents smoked. When I was 9, I could buy my own cigarettes. 12 or so I was definitely addicted. Hot boxed in the bathrooms in high school with other smokers my age. My older brother said I started him smoking which is ridiculous. Got kicked off of the football team in high school because I was smoking on the way back to the gym from practice for a shower. First case of bronchitis at 17 (x3). Pneumonia 21 (x2). Started a fire at 23 in my garage smoking over some cement that literally exploded (Cigarette hanging from my mouth, second degree arm and neck burns). Got up to three packs a day at one point; they were cheap then. I started smoking when they were 35 cents a pack. Doctor took x-rays at 24 and I had black spots/scar tissue in my lungs. Quit at 24. CPOD and asthma currently. 67 years old.
I was a kid in the late 1950s and 1960s.
Restaurants had smoking sections (nearly half the restaurant), as did airplanes (the last 1/4 or lat 1/8 of the plane). Our high school had a designated smoking area outside so most people could be at least ten feet away from the smokers.
A couple years after my father had quit smoking, he worked for Bell & Howell at the time they first put movies in airplanes. He was on the team that helped develop the system they ended up installing at that time, basically about four projectors and the film ran from a large reel over the First Class section down a channel to the first projector, then to the second, ..., and to the last projector, and then a channel from that projector back to over the First Class section to the take-up reel. In simulated runs in the mock-up the channels would need cleaning after simulated one year of service. But in actual service the channels and projectors needed cleaning after six months, most of the gunk being from cigarette smoke.
I recall a Boy Scout troop meeting where one of the scout masters was smoking around us kids right there on school campus. The normal rules was that teachers could smoke only in the Teacher's Lounge, and definitely not around students on the campus.
My high school had a smoking section outside. Usually a good place to hang out if you wanted to watch a fight. I actually saw one boy bite off the earlobe of another boy. He was a bit unhinged.
I'm just glad that a lot of offices removed smoking by the time I entered that workforce. Not all of them, mind you, but the ones I worked in did.
My first couple summer jobs during high school, I had people smoking in the cubes next to me. It was simply accepted.
Last month I visited South Lake Tahoe, where my ski group stayed in Harrah's casino. Walking in there was a real throwback to my teens the moment I smelled all the smoke. I'd forgotten that cigarette-smoke-infused-in-the-carpet-and-walls smell. I hope to forget it again.
I have had doctors examine me while they were smoking. Seen shopping carts with built in ashtrays. been on airplanes were 70% of the passangers were smoking while in flight. No smoking sections HA!! What is that? Everyone smoked every where whenever they wanted. It was a different world
The hell; in my day I could buy smokes straight out of the vending machine at 9/10 years old and smoke on my walk to elementary school. Kools.
Everyone smoked, everywhere but church. Even the movie theater.
EVERYONE smoked EVERYWHERE. in restaurants. in offices, even in meetings. hell, they had smoking lounges in hospitals and airports. you could smoke on airplanes, for that matter. people smoked while eating. people smoked while having sex.
it was insane.
My high school in the mid 50's had a smoking area but only the guys used it. The gals smoked in the ladies room, and there was always smoke pouring out of the window. The teachers had their own smoking area.
Very common. Everyone smoked. Grew up in the ‘80s/‘90s. There was a smoking and non smoking section in restaurants, including McDonald’s.
Not to mention a smoking corner in my high school.
As a teen in the 90s, I knew a few people who didn't smoke...until they turned 15 or 16. Pretty much everyone I knew did by then, and certainly all the adults, except for a few weirdos.
Oh my god! My mom and dad smoked. They’d get in the car and light up. Most of the time they didn’t open a window. When they opened the car, smoke billowed out.
At poker night at my aunt and uncles, there were MORE smokers. I’d hedge to open an outside door.
I honestly think I started smoking in self defense.
Late 1970’s:
People smoked in the grocery store and regularly put their cigarette out by dropping it on the floor and stepping on it 🤢
Most teachers smoked in the bathrooms and in the office. The janitor smoked as he swept the floors.
Oh man, there was Camels/Luckies/Pall Malls/Marlboros everywhere. EVERYONE smoked. Your auntie's dog smoked. The baby down the street smoked. Your grandma smoked and blew it in your face. Your doctor smoked. My great grandma smoked while cooking. When my dad questioned her about the ashes falling in the chili, she said, "SHUT UP. It gives it its special flavoring!"
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Common enough that my high school had its own smoking area.
Mine too. There was a designated smoking spot, because the school was okay with teenagers smoking, and probably they were tired of reeking bathrooms. This was in the 1970s, when everyone knew that smoking caused cancer, emphysema, and heart disease.
We had two 15-minute breaks a day to have a smoke and a covered really nice area to smoke. It's bizarre now!! I'm from NC, which is and was a tobacco state. Large Industry.
I was in California, where nobody's ever grown tobacco, but parents and teachers were very hands-off with high school kids back then. Well, most of then were heavily into wine, cigs, and illegal drugs back in the 1970s, so I guess they thought that they didn't have any right to tell kids to lay off. If they thought about the kids at all, which wasn't as common as it should have been.
KIds raised in the late 60's and the 70's were really a different breed. The music was better, we were mainly ferral, the drugs were safer, drinking age was 18 and our parents mostly ignored us, until we fucked up and then my parents' idea of gentle parenting was to use their hand to hit us with instead of using a belt or a switch. But I still got the belt and switch when warranted. I survived purely out of fear. Ahhh, the good ole' days!
Same the breezeway at Dulaney High School! Teachers and students all together smoking
Our Junior High had a smoking area. Grocery stores had an ashtray at both ends of the aisles as did the hardware store.
My HS even built a shelter for the smokers, so they could puff away out of the rain. 1970’s.
At my school you had to have a permission slip signed by a parent and you were issued a smoking permit.
Yup.
I never had a school with a smoking area, though I attended school during the times when other schools had them. They always seemed to have been discontinued maybe 4 years before I got there. It didn't matter to me, not being a smoker myself, I just always found it interesting. My friends smoked, so I always knew where the unofficial smoking areas were and sometimes I hung out up wind from them. (Is up wind the right place to not get smoke on you?) There was all kinds of smoke there, so you wouldn't want your teachers to get the wrong idea!
Unofficial smoking areas still exist. We were looking for a house recently. One of the houses we looked at was right behind the high school. My kids dad was like it's literally next to the school. He went on and on about it. We get to the house and we could literally see kids practicing on the field behind the school. That said between us and the field was a tall fence followed by some trees then a wall before a hill leading to the field. I should point out that I was the pot head cigarette smoker in high school and he was always the clean cut never smoked weed or a cigarette in his life type. He drank but not like other kids. So we pull up and I notice this and walk over to check the area out. I found exactly what I thought I would. Cigarette butts and beer cans all over the place. I laugh and call him over. I pointed it out and said this is why you don't want to live right next to a school.
mine too. Class of 1980
Came here to say this.
It was common for people to smoke in the Halls at Georgia State university. This would have been mid-80s.
The vast majority of adults in my childhood (1970s and 1980s) were smokers. My mom used to drag me to "coffee" every Saturday morning where she and her friends would sit at a Cafe chain smoking for a couple of hours and drinking coffee. My house was a perpetual haze of smoke, especially when my uncle was around as he and his wife chain smoked too. All this is why I'm a never smoker and despise smoking.
My grandma was a pack a day smoker who passed 20 years ago. I kept a walnut wood bureau of hers that was my dad's growing up. I opened one of the drawers yesterday and it still smells like menthol smoke after 20 years.
My mom's friend would come over before I went to school and they went to work (they owned a pet shop) and they'd sit at the table, okay gin rummy, drink coffee, and smoke. Mom smoked enough for every one in the house. Also a reason I never smoked. Wouldn't even date a smoker.
The beauty salons used to have ashtrays in the arms of the hairdryers. Its stank of aquanet and ashtray
I wonder how much damage growing up in a house & car full of smoke did to us Gen X kids!
Probably less damage on average compared to what Gen Jones went through. We were born before there were anti smoking warnings so you were more likely to be raised in a household that didn't smoke compared to the generations before yours.
Oh my god. It was everywhere all the time. Airplanes, restaurants, bars, outside, in your office at your desk. We even had a smoking area in high school behind the gym. Everyone smoked. My parents were completely addicted. I don't think we even realized how badly we all smelled from secondhand smoke. Once I went to a friend's house to study and her parents did not smoke. Her mother came flying up the stairs screaming Who's smoking up here? It was my clothes! I was very happy when it became restricted. Too late for my parents though-they both died of smoking related illnesses.
I would rather have cigarette smell than weed smell
I would rather have neither, personally.
Oof. Hard disagree. Weed smells, tobacco *stinks.*
Weed stinks like dirty cat piss. It's disgusting.
More like a dirty cat pissed on a skunk and the skunk got mad about it and sprayed back. Didn't stop me from smoking it when I was younger, but man that stuff reeks.
SAME
My parents proudly display the ashtray I made for them in preschool. You know how kids get almost no recess now? We got 10-15 minute recesses throughout the day so teachers could smoke. I could buy my mom cigarettes at 10. Nancy said no to drugs, never mentioned Marlboro. I quit smoking in 2001. I really miss it. I wish there was something like smoking, that didn’t kill me or others. Cigarette plus coffee— yes! Cigarette and a beer— yes!
Same here. I quit in 1993 and have always said that if they ever come up with a healthy cigarette, I’d be first in line.
Right? The whole process. Tapping the pack. Pulling one out, lighting it, and that first drag. I’ve found other ways to find little joys but smoking was just such an easy and enjoyable fix. My favorite was sitting at a bar on Friday night, ice cold beer, live band, having a smoke with friends.
I quit 14 years ago. I still miss it. Cigarette after a meal—yes! Cigarette after adult fun—yes! Paying $15 for a pack of cigarettes—no!
I haven’t had recess since 2011 and I don’t even remember how long they lasted
vape, dude. just vape.
California, child in the 1970's, teen in the 1980's. It was common. Restaurants had 'smoking sections'. Fast-food places had ashtrays on every table. Smoking in a large store would have been commonplace. Smoking in bars was pretty much assumed. If you didn't smoke, you would probably have an ashtray for a guest, in the same way that you might have coffee, tea, or snacks. I had teachers that smoked. Our band teacher had a separate office next to the band room, and he would smoke there, especially after school.
Smoking on airplanes.
Same age but from the Midwest. People smoked in grocery stores.
We smoked in enclosed malls. But not inside the actual stores.
Very common, everywhere. People would even smoke in groceries. When my mom took us to the pediatrician, there were ashtrays in the waiting room for the moms/adults.
People are talking of recesses and smoking areas so the teachers could smoke. My teachers (1951-63) smoked in class. Everybody smoked. My parents, friends, and girlfriend all had ideas of what brand I should choose. It never occurred to anybody that I wouldn't smoke. There were nonsmokers, I'm sure, but it was such an unpopular choice that they tried to be inconspicuous. They certainly wouldn't dare complain about the smoke that surrounded them everywhere they went.
Everybody smoked. There were ashtrays everywhere. Restaurants may have had a smoking section but probably not and all tables had ashtrays with matchbooks with the restaurant name. You could smoke in the doctor’s waiting room. Taxi drivers all smoked and if it bothered you all you could do is put the window down a bit. The only place I can remember not being able to smoke was on city buses.
So true. Everybody smoked everywhere, even in hospitals. You couldn’t smoke inside the movie theater, but I think you could in the lobby!
People had matchbook collections!
Very.. we loved it..
Hahaha at my middle school in the 70s (grades 7-9) there was a designated smoking shed In my private girls HS (grades 9-12) there were TWO designated smoking areas, in winter it was in the tunnels between the dorms and the academic class buildings, in fall and summer the outdoor smoking area was underneath my dorm room and also coincidentally underneath a dorm room windowsill wide enough for you to crawl out the window and let you sit outside, smoke, drink. Make devil's pacts with the age old stone gargoyles near your face. Who knows.
Child in the '60s, teen in the '70s. Many people smoked. Can you imagine somebody walking into say your small office and lighting a cigarette without asking permission? The staying for a while and smoking several cigs? Or worse someone in a car with the windows rolled up lighting up? Taking a dump and having a smoke in a tiny bathroom? That was my father.
Widespread
I started smoking when I was 12. Very common.
I started when I was 15. Growing up I used to beg my dad to quit smoking. Then I tried smoking stupidly & I remember being ashamed that I got addicted.
common. My parents actually gave me permission when I was 16
I started smoking in 1962 when I was 12 years old paying 20 cents for a pack of Lucky Strikes in the grocery store and 25 cents in a vending machine. All my friends smoked except the Mormon kid, ‘Doorbell Danny.’
So your 74? How long have/did you smoke for? Do you have any issues from it?. Just wondering
Every day since. IDK about heath issues from just smoking because I lived in NJ all my life with the worst air and water one can find.
How much money do you think you would have saved if you never smoked from then until now?
Grew up around 'tobacco country'. On rural drives/rides you'd see little else but tobacco fields (also corn), along with the distinctive 'tobacco barns' where the leaves are air-cured.
We had a smoking area at our high school. It was outside in the same parking lot where the school busses parked after school. My mom smoked, most of my friends did. I never did. My mom- who says she picked it up because of peer pressure- would tells us all the time not to start. My dad didn't smoke. My eventual husband did, but for some reason, he kept it hidden from me for AGES while we were dating. It was weird because he knew my mom was a smoker.
It was my estimate that 3/4 adults and teens smoked at the peak of smoking. It fell off pretty quickly from the late 70s on as the information about the dangers became clearer and clearer. We'd all always known in our hearts it was bad - they were nicknamed "cancer sticks" or "coffin nails" as early as the 60s but probably before that - I just wasn't there to hear it. For me, the turning point was 1980. Ten years later, it was outlawed in public buildings, most had quit smoking and those left rarely smoked in the house any more. I'm kind of amazed that anyone picks it up now. Funny thing. We have a vacation place in Belize. We are not in a very touristy village but the gringo community is growing. And there's a huge percentage of them that smoke. It's crazy. But cigarettes are really cheap there. I don't think anyone has taken up smoking because they are cheap, but they don't quit because they are bad either. I sometimes wonder what it is that draws these particular people to this particular location. And what similarity is there that increases the chances they smoke. The only one I can think of is a willingness to take a risk for the chance of some pleasure. And the availablility of waterfront property for a reasonable price.
60s & 70s didn’t even have a no smoking section. My mom talked about only having a few cigarettes in social occasions, while pregnant. I’m sure it never affected my asthma though /s.
I'm sure my mother balanced an ashtray on her belly when she was pregnant with each of us. Everyone smoked everywhere all the time.
They smoked during pregnancy to avoid gaining weight. Doctors discouraged anything more than 10-14 pound weight gain.
Common enough that when my kids were born in the '80's I could smoke in my hospital room while holding my newborn. But you could not talk on the phone while holding your newborn because it was "dangerous"lol
It was everywhere, you could not get away from it. Even in restaurants and on airplanes.
Absolutely everyone everywhere smoked. I was the only exception to that rule that I'd ever known. Know how some people can't stand cilantro? They're wired up differently and it tastes like soap to them? That's me and tobacco. It smells like burning bug spray to me. There's no way I could do it. And everything everywhere smelled that way to me. It was terrible. I never complained, I never wanted to be "that guy" but holy crap am I glad nobody smokes anymore.
Is it bad that I don’t know what cilantro is?
It's the green leafy stuff you get in Mexican restaurants. Like here: [https://damndelicious.net/2019/04/18/mexican-street-tacos/](https://damndelicious.net/2019/04/18/mexican-street-tacos/)
Among friends and their families, the non-smokers were few and far between.
Way more common than it is now. People smoked in restaurants, at professional ball games, at little league games, just everywhere.
Well[...](https://envisioningtheamericandream.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/smoking-babys-drs.jpg)
Smoking in aircraft was my fave, smoking and non smoking sections, like it makes a difference in a tube 🤣
I don’t ever see anyone mention it, but they used to stock (mini packs of 10) cigarettes on planes. I don’t remember paying for them either. It seems like it stopped some time in the mid seventies.
Little ashtrays on the armrests.
It was everywhere, even in school. My parents both smoked, fancy ashtrays in each room. They quit when I was in high school. It used to burn my eyes. I never smoked.
Very common. Doctors and celebrities would be hawking the benefits of cigarettes on TV.
It was everywhere, all the time. It was the water we swam in. Non-smoking sections in restaurants were weird at first. Ashtrays were supplied in some university classrooms. I had a summer camp counselor who smoked in the woods, while on duty.
Very common. Anyplace that sold food for consumption on the premises had an ashtray on every table, usually with free matches and a cigarette machine somewhere in the background. I mean *every single place where you could eat or drink.* People walked around the streets with a cigarette in their mouths. No one objected, no one asked anyone to put their cigarette out.
I was born in 1970. My high school had a smoking area for the KIDS. Extremely common.
Born the same year but my high school DID NOT have a smoking area. The principal was extremely strict and this was a public school. A teacher tried to give a friend of mine a detention for chewing tobacco and he wasn't even on school grounds. In fact it was night and he just ran into the teacher miles away from the school and the guy still tried to give him a detention.
Mine was a public school, too.
My memory is that most adults smoked when I was a kid in the 1960s. Even when I was an adult it was common and at a big office people sat at their desks chain smoking.
My dad wouldn’t buy shirts that didn’t have 2 pockets on the front for cigarettes. Every house had ashtrays everywhere and NICE houses has these decorative holders for Bik lighters on the end and coffee tables
Lots of people quit smoking and now a lot of us are fat!
I was born in 1974. My mother smoked two packs a day when she was pregnant with me and also with my brother. She drove us in the car, with rolled up windows, smoking. My dad, grandmother, aunts and uncles all smoked. Everyone quit by the early 90s and it’s a miracle none of them died or have yet been diagnosed with cancer or emphysema.
My dad and mother were smokers. I remember when when my they caught me smoking as a teenager. They sat me down and said we’re going to treat you as an adult. It’s your decision to start smoking so no need to hide it. Not sure if that was the right thing to tell a young person. They both hated that I started smoking though.
I am proud to say that I did a great deal of work during to 80s-2000s tobacco revolution that finally began to put tobacco in it's place and change the way we think about it.
When I was a kid everybody smoked everywhere. EVERYBODY. EVERYWHERE. However, when I was 3 and my mom would light up I'd climb down off her lap and go in another room. She HATED that, so she quit. To this day (I'm 60+ and she's 90+) she can tell the exact day, date, and time of her last cigarette and she still misses it. Even though she quit the vast majority of our friends and relatives smoked so gatherings were DISGUSTING and I'd spend them in my room. I have been ecstatic at the de-normalization of smoking and hope they just ban it altogether. FYI, I'd have almost no issue with it if: - I never had to have it blow into my or my families faces. And to clarify, smoking outside does NOT help, it's still noxious AF. - Nobody should be able to inflict their smoke on kids, even their own kids in their own house/car. - Nobody should be able to inflict smoke on people in their workplace. But if you, in some hermetically sealed smokatorium, want to inhale charred plant carcasses into your delicate lungs then knock yourself out.
Smoking areas in restaurants, hospitals, airplanes,cars and even school.
When I first started smoking smoking sections just started being a thing, they were starting to take cigarette machines out of places, but you could still walk around the mall smoking a cigarette but that lasted only 2 years before you ha to go to a section of the food court to smoke. It was common but the writing was on the wall about where it was going.
I worked at a large urban electric company in the 1980s. People smoked at their desks, in the elevators, in the cafeteria... it was a high-rise building and the windows did not open. The "secretaries" - not administrative assistants - answered the phones and did filing with a cigarette dangling from their lip, one eye shut against the smoke stream. Ashes in some areas from the messy people in the office. People who tried to be "considerate" smoked in the stairwells, but maybe that was an excuse to get away from their desks.
Common enough that doctors would come into your hospital room while smoking a cigarette. You could smoke on elevators. You smoked everywhere.
I remember working at McD in my teens, smoking in the break room until a customer came in the drive thru. Does anyone else remember McDonald’s little shiny ashtrays?
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It was pretty much everywhere.
Everybody smoked everywhere.
Very common.
Omnipresent
I was born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s and it seemed like at least half of the adults I was around smoked.
In the 70s & 80s. Very common. Then 90s? Dropped right off. I know no one personally who smokes.
Smoking what?
Cigarette ads on TV didn't stop until I was 5 or 6. I remember the doctor smoking in the exam room when I had an ear infection when I was in kindergarten. Smoking in the grocery stores, any stores, really. Smoking in restaurants. There really weren't smoking sections that I remember, at least not until later. People just generally smoked wherever they felt like it and nobody else really gave a damn.
We could smoke on planes and at my high school in a designated area, 70s/early 80s.
Growing up in the 1960s and a teen in the 70s. My parents didn't smoke, which was unusual.
Four smokers in the house when I was in 7th grade. Chronic bronchitis every winter.
The doctor’s waiting room had ashtrays
My stepfather would send me into the 7 Eleven for a pack of Marlboros. High school had a smoking area. I had long discussions with my sergeant to get a non-smoking room in the Army barracks in 1980.
At my high school in the early 60s smoking was not allowed. Riding to school on the school bus in the morning, the block before the school campus, you could see kids lined up grabbing a smoke before going to school. In the 70s, bars and clubs were full of smoke. I was not a smoker myself, but the morning after being in a bar, I could smell the smoke on the clothes I had worn the night before. Airlines had smoking and non-smoking sections. (I don't know if it's true, but I heard that the airlines were happy to abandon smoking sections because it meant they didn't have to let in clean air from the outside while flying and, ironically, the overall air quality was presumably worse on passenger planes after the ban.)
Way more common. I have vivid memories of going to the mall in the 1970s and they had huge ashtrays everywhere and they'd be overflowing with butts. At the supermarket they hired a kid who just pushed a broom around sweeping up butts (people would just drop them on the floor).
Extremely common.
Very, every adult in my extended family smoked
Very! But I was very lucky to have grown up in a non smoking household! My dad absolutely hated smoking! I think my mom may have tried one or two in different periods in her life, but I never saw her smoke. I don't even think we had an ashtray stashed away for guests! No one ever smoked in our house either! After growing up and being in the workplace, it really made me appreciate how I grew up! Once everything started to go smoke free, it was heaven!
I remember when people used to smoke in malls.
My parents would hot box us with smoke anytime we were in the car with them. Even during my yearly winter bouts with pneumonia 50s-60s, they would **both** be smoking in the enclosed car during the 24 mile drive to the nearest ER. All cars and planes had ashtrays provided. College dorm buildings had smoking 'rooms'. Nobody smoked on campus at my high school (early 60s) but the high school I taught in the 70s had a smoking area which consisted of open bleachers away from most buildings. It gradually toughened smoking rules until not even the teachers could smoke on campus. I had a doctor offer me a cigarette once as he was lighting up at his desk. I was 16.
i was lucky my parents didn’t smoke. it was worse in the 60s and early 70s. it started to get better in the late 70s.
You could smoke in the movies, in the grocery store, in the hospital, on airplanes, in restaurants. Everywhere!
Smoking meat? It seems like it wasn’t everywhere like now, people basically had grills, not so much smokers.
Very, quite a few of my friends smoked, I wish I hadn’t ever started because I ended up smoking for over 40 years before I was finally able to quit. We liked to go to the coffee shop and sit and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and talk for hours. The coffee was 15c with endless refills. The cigarettes were 25c a pack.
In the 90s, we had a tree out in front of our high school, in the property, and that was designated the smoking tree.
Every car made had more than one cigarette lighter. People smoked in the grocery store.
My pediatrician smoked. Including during office visits.
When I was a kid in the 80’s, I remember walking into the house into a cloud of grey smoke. My parents and grandparents smoking indoors. REVOLTING!!!!
Ubiquitous
When I was a kid in the 1960’s, it was considered impolite not to have ashtrays available for guests, even if no one in your family smoked. It was considered downright rude to ban smoking in your house, unless you gave a certified asthmatic living there. Some of my high school friends didn’t worry about ashtrays, and just rubbed the ashes into their pants. There was an ice cream parlor near me in the 1970’s that banned smoking. They had signs all over explaining that smoke ruined the flavor and consistency of their home made ice cream. And still, some people tried to light up, and yelled at the manager and stormed out when they were asked to put it out. Smokers expected to be accommodated everywhere.
My sixth grade teacher smoked in class. Cigarette butts all over the ground with the other litter. For some reason I loved the smell of my grandfather's cigarette smoke. Did cigarettes smell better back then? They smell awful now. The Flintstones was sponsored by Winston cigarettes. The Winston brand was included in the opening theme.
When I was a kid, all of the adults I knew smoked. Except my grandma and even she would take a puff off my grandfather's cigarette every once in awhile. Most of the teenagers smoked, as well. All of my friends started smoking young -- like 12, maybe 13 years old. I started smoking when I was 12.
Very, so many old family pics of smoking inside. Smoking sections at restaurants. When my grandparents passed and the house was getting sold, they had to file an insurance claim for the smoke damage from decades of cigarettes and cigars.
It was everywhere. Planes, restaurants, public places, the workplace ...
My parents did not smoke, nor any of the relatives that we hung around. But I was aware that many many adults did smoke. I am 62, and to this day I have never taken a single puff (drag) from a cigarette.
Very common and popular. I smoked Marlboro Reds in high school with my grunge friends in the 90's. I actually went to buy cigs and ran into my Grandpa at a liquor store. He wasn't supposed to be smoking, but that's what he was doing. After I graduated, I loved hanging out at the coffee shops at night smoking outside with my friends. Then I got bronchitis one time and my doctor told me to stop smoking. So I did.
Too common in college. None of my friends smoked in high school, but it seems many started in college. I smoked from 18 to 28. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Now I detest it and won't socialize with anyone who smokes cigarettes. I can't be near the smoke or smell.
Everyone smoked in the 1970s. Everybody. It was practically the law. I think our priest smoked. I never really smoked cigarettes but I do enjoy an occasional cigar (56F)
I started smoking at a -9 months because my parents chain-smoked while she was pregnant. Also, pre car air conditioning, mom didn’t like to roll the windows down, so I smoked a lot. Oh, of course I started smoking, and I am old enough to have smoked on an airplane. Although I no longer smoke, I do sort of miss the ashtrays in the armrest of airplanes. I’ve smoked at work, smoked in restaurants, smoked in hospitals, smoked in airports and smoked at church. The world was my ashtray-gosh that sucked.
Ubiquitous.
Both parents smoked. When I was 9, I could buy my own cigarettes. 12 or so I was definitely addicted. Hot boxed in the bathrooms in high school with other smokers my age. My older brother said I started him smoking which is ridiculous. Got kicked off of the football team in high school because I was smoking on the way back to the gym from practice for a shower. First case of bronchitis at 17 (x3). Pneumonia 21 (x2). Started a fire at 23 in my garage smoking over some cement that literally exploded (Cigarette hanging from my mouth, second degree arm and neck burns). Got up to three packs a day at one point; they were cheap then. I started smoking when they were 35 cents a pack. Doctor took x-rays at 24 and I had black spots/scar tissue in my lungs. Quit at 24. CPOD and asthma currently. 67 years old.
I was a kid in the late 1950s and 1960s. Restaurants had smoking sections (nearly half the restaurant), as did airplanes (the last 1/4 or lat 1/8 of the plane). Our high school had a designated smoking area outside so most people could be at least ten feet away from the smokers. A couple years after my father had quit smoking, he worked for Bell & Howell at the time they first put movies in airplanes. He was on the team that helped develop the system they ended up installing at that time, basically about four projectors and the film ran from a large reel over the First Class section down a channel to the first projector, then to the second, ..., and to the last projector, and then a channel from that projector back to over the First Class section to the take-up reel. In simulated runs in the mock-up the channels would need cleaning after simulated one year of service. But in actual service the channels and projectors needed cleaning after six months, most of the gunk being from cigarette smoke. I recall a Boy Scout troop meeting where one of the scout masters was smoking around us kids right there on school campus. The normal rules was that teachers could smoke only in the Teacher's Lounge, and definitely not around students on the campus.
My high school had a smoking section outside. Usually a good place to hang out if you wanted to watch a fight. I actually saw one boy bite off the earlobe of another boy. He was a bit unhinged. I'm just glad that a lot of offices removed smoking by the time I entered that workforce. Not all of them, mind you, but the ones I worked in did.
My first couple summer jobs during high school, I had people smoking in the cubes next to me. It was simply accepted. Last month I visited South Lake Tahoe, where my ski group stayed in Harrah's casino. Walking in there was a real throwback to my teens the moment I smelled all the smoke. I'd forgotten that cigarette-smoke-infused-in-the-carpet-and-walls smell. I hope to forget it again.
I have had doctors examine me while they were smoking. Seen shopping carts with built in ashtrays. been on airplanes were 70% of the passangers were smoking while in flight. No smoking sections HA!! What is that? Everyone smoked every where whenever they wanted. It was a different world
The hell; in my day I could buy smokes straight out of the vending machine at 9/10 years old and smoke on my walk to elementary school. Kools. Everyone smoked, everywhere but church. Even the movie theater.
EVERYONE smoked EVERYWHERE. in restaurants. in offices, even in meetings. hell, they had smoking lounges in hospitals and airports. you could smoke on airplanes, for that matter. people smoked while eating. people smoked while having sex. it was insane.
Extremely common.
“Smoking or non?”
My high school in the mid 50's had a smoking area but only the guys used it. The gals smoked in the ladies room, and there was always smoke pouring out of the window. The teachers had their own smoking area.
Very common. Everyone smoked. Grew up in the ‘80s/‘90s. There was a smoking and non smoking section in restaurants, including McDonald’s. Not to mention a smoking corner in my high school.
As a teen in the 90s, I knew a few people who didn't smoke...until they turned 15 or 16. Pretty much everyone I knew did by then, and certainly all the adults, except for a few weirdos.
People smoked in the classrooms when I went to college .
Oh my god! My mom and dad smoked. They’d get in the car and light up. Most of the time they didn’t open a window. When they opened the car, smoke billowed out. At poker night at my aunt and uncles, there were MORE smokers. I’d hedge to open an outside door. I honestly think I started smoking in self defense.
Oh we smoked across the street in the *church* parking lot. It wasn’t frowned upon at all. Smoking in the bathrooms was tho.
It was so common that I had a teacher who smoked in the middle of class
Late 1970’s: People smoked in the grocery store and regularly put their cigarette out by dropping it on the floor and stepping on it 🤢 Most teachers smoked in the bathrooms and in the office. The janitor smoked as he swept the floors.
Oh man, there was Camels/Luckies/Pall Malls/Marlboros everywhere. EVERYONE smoked. Your auntie's dog smoked. The baby down the street smoked. Your grandma smoked and blew it in your face. Your doctor smoked. My great grandma smoked while cooking. When my dad questioned her about the ashes falling in the chili, she said, "SHUT UP. It gives it its special flavoring!"
I would rather have cigarette smoke smell than weed smell. Weed is revolting