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I can't speak for the 30's and 40's but in the 50's when I was a kid seemed like everyone smoked. Both parents were chain smokers and they passed away from smoking related illnesses.
One of my best and earliest memories was of a cigarette vending machine at the bowling alley. It was so pretty...all those colors and different designs and it even had lights on it! It was like a jukebox almost. We kids used to pick out which ones we would get if we were older, based on how pretty the packages were.
My mom started smoking at age 14 and quit at 40. Although my dad never smoked (his dad died of lung cancer) it seems like everyone they knew did. This was in the 50's-60's.
I live in CA where there is a public smoking ban and a huge anti-smoking attitude. The first time my kids saw someone smoking in public you would have thought they were witnessing a robbery.
I was born in the 50's and my dad was the only adult I knew who didn't smoke. No one knew about the cancer dangers. We kids used to push in the cigarette lighter in the car for Mom who started smoking when she was 16. No big deal.
Then one day our forward-thinking family doctor told my mom that her cigarette smoke was probably making my asthma worse. She quit cold turkey that day.
I'm assuming movies today contain smoking because of the stories... war, gangsters, movies that take place back in the past, etc... higher percentage of smokers.
I have seen a few movies in recent years set in current times where smoking is still seen as "normal", "Superbad" was one where Seth Rogen is seen puffing on a Marlboro, but then again Rogen himself is a smoker.
It would be interesting to see just how many of today's young stars do smoke. I do know that those boy bands of ten years ago like N'Sync, 98 Degrees and the Backstreet Boys were mostly smokers, I still remember that interview on E years ago where despite being a 'health nut", AJ Mclean from the Backstreet Boys was also into Marlboro Lights. Maybe he has since quit, have no idea. Funny how so many young people today seem to avoid Coke & Pepsi because "they are bad for you" but they have no problem smoking, OK "puffing" cigarettes or those popular flavored little cigars.
I seem to remember reading someplace not that long ago where even Miley Cyrus is a smoker. Of course many of those in hip-hop/rap and many sports stars like baseball's "ARod" are into cigars.
When I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, I didn't know a single kid who had allergies or asthma, and there wasn't even a word for 'inner ear infection', even though almost every kid grew up in a house full of cigarette smoke.
We played outdoors, maybe that had something to do with it. Something is making our indoor environment toxic, but it must not be tobacco, because kids growing up now in tobacco-free houses have a much, much higher incidence of allergies and asthma than back when they played outdoors in the sunshine and walked to school when it was 20 below.
Maybe it's plastic. Nothing then was made of plastic, which is constantly giving off fumes, inside every house and building. Similar to what you get when you burn plastic, but slower. But the global economy would grind to a halt if we banned plastic.
I seem to remmeber alot of kids with watery eyes and dripping noses in the 50's. There were alos alot of different coughes then too. Baascailly many more kids died from things bacj then and with Polio so frightening minor thiongs like allergies were not paid attention to much.But if you look at some photos of kids then they were in juch better phyaical condition then also;especailly weioght wise and they got more exercise. But i still believe they got colds and allergies as much from natural things and of course the pollution then. I rememebr going to disney Land and we had to leave because the smog got to us.Masny people died in the 60-70 from exposure to things like asbestoes and many areas had a high ealry death rate later found to be from exposure to many things where they wroked or their family member brought home.Afterall healthy people do not die that are in phycally that good a shape in their 50's and 60's at the rates they did.
I have seen a few movies in recent years set in current times where smoking is still seen as "normal", "Superbad" was one where Seth Rogen is seen puffing on a Marlboro, but then again Rogen himself is a smoker.
It would be interesting to see just how many of today's young stars do smoke. I do know that those boy bands of ten years ago like N'Sync, 98 Degrees and the Backstreet Boys were mostly smokers, I still remember that interview on E years ago where despite being a 'health nut", AJ Mclean from the Backstreet Boys was also into Marlboro Lights. Maybe he has since quit, have no idea. Funny how so many young people today seem to avoid Coke & Pepsi because "they are bad for you" but they have no problem smoking, OK "puffing" cigarettes or those popular flavored little cigars.
I seem to remember reading someplace not that long ago where even Miley Cyrus is a smoker. Of course many of those in hip-hop/rap and many sports stars like baseball's "ARod" are into cigars.
I was waiting at the haircut place and was flipping through one of those god-awful People magazines and I remember a picture of Kate Beckinsale smoking a cigarette outside of a gym. There was another one of Jennifer Aniston smoking.
A lot of people have this notion that "only low-class, uneducated people smoke" (that's verbatim from another thread somewhere) but really, people from all walks of life smoke. I work at a hotel, and we're completely non-smoking so people have to go outside. Trust me-even handsome men in expensive business suits and beautiful women step outside for a few.
A lot of people have this notion that "only low-class, uneducated people smoke" (that's verbatim from another thread somewhere) but really, people from all walks of life smoke. I work at a hotel, and we're completely non-smoking so people have to go outside. Trust me-even handsome men in expensive business suits and beautiful women step outside for a few.
Very similar to the stereotypes when it comes to cigars. Even in this day and age lot of people when they think of someone who smokes cigars they still think of George Burns, Groucho Marx, Archie Bunker or their grandfather puffing White Owls. of course if those who believe such things would take the time and visit a cigar bar or even a nightclub that allows them, its kinda tough to find anyone over 40 puffing on their cigars but very easy to find those in their 20's doing it.
As smoking risks became better known in the sixties, those who continued to smoke were increasingly poorer and less educated. This was not the case before the risks were known and there were exceptions even after the risks were recognized. For example doctors have very high smoking rates compared to the population as a whole, likely because of the stress of their jobs.
Tobacco and smoking is prominent in many Civil War memoirs. Usually it was smoked in pipes but cigars were preferred. Memoirs from the First World War have the need for cigarettes frequently referred to. U.S. soldiers complained about how cigarettes sold to the troops had been stamped "donated by..." and some soldiers found ways to smoke while outdoors in the rain by sitting under ammunition wagons!
By WW2 if you didn't smoke you probably didn't drink or go out with girls yet. A friend of mine was in the USN in WW2 and sent to his duty station via a gasoline tanker. (No smoking allowed on the ship!) The smokers on the ship were allowed to lower a small boat and sail a couple of hundred feet from the ship to smoke - and they did. Even in the rain the men would hold a tarp over themselves to smoke!
Both my parents smoked and my Dad used to say "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it a thousand times."
Until the late 80's any kind of a meeting, get together or social event was smoke filled. When a smoker asked "Do you mind if I smoke?" no one ever said not to smoke. I seem to recall little ash trays in the armrests of movie theater seats. My high school forbade smoking but if you looked on the grass outside the window of the boys room you would find hundreds of cigarette butts.
Today my co-workers are paying over $5 a pack of twenty for cigarettes. But... they still smoke!
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