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I remember as a kid, late 60's/early 70's, my family doctor always had a cigarette burning in his ashtray in his office. I hated going to dinner with some of my aunts and uncles, because they smoked. My brother and i would try to sneak some water in the bottom of the ashtray in hopes it would douse their cig!
As a teen (1970s), I got so fed up with my mother having to have a window down in the car for the 45-minute drive to town (what, you can't go 45 minutes without one of those things?) during subfreezing weather that I launched a campaign of pranks. I put a little water in her ashtrays. I bought cigarette loads that would go off when the stick was lit; got in trouble with my dad once because she lit the smoke in bed (and I was being bad? Harrumph) at 6 AM while we were visiting our cousins. I poked match heads into the end. Only later in life did a much more evil-minded friend suggest one thing I'd never thought of: put a nail paring in there, as the taste and smell of burning nail paring is just nasty.
I'm probably lucky they didn't emancipate me and throw me out of the house early.
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.
Maybe its the drive we seem to have to sanitize the world. If you don't stimulate the body's systems with normal things, like dirt and the normal range of bacteria, the body loses track of how to deal with them. People fill their houses with cleaners and antibacterial washes and we seal up out houses so well we trap all of that inside.
I don't remember a lot of plastics, but I did have severe allergies and multiple ear infections, on a regular basis. I grew up with only two thirds normal lung capacity between the extremely bad smog and the cloud of smoke. I try to keep the fumes from stuff in bottles down in my environment as well, use vineger to clean, and in this area where the air is clear, open the windows and let the air blow through. I'm sure that while smoking is bad that our drive to keep the world sparkling and safe has not helped our kids either. Playing outside in the dirt is something that every kid should be familiar with. Not everything our parents did was something to avoid.
Everybody smoked in the 1960's (I started smoking when I was 13, but quit six years later). As the 1970's wore on there became more and more concern about the health effects and so by the early 1980's less than a quarter of the population smoked. Now it's down to, depending on the state, between 16-20% and you really can't smoke anywhere anymore other than in your home or your car (provided that there isn't a minor child riding with you).
got in trouble with my dad once because she lit the smoke in bed (and I was being bad? Harrumph) at 6 AM while we were visiting our cousins. I poked match heads into the end.
Now that one is funny... a little dangerous, but funny. Have you seen what match heads do when you light them en masse like that? It's kind of like a fourth of July firework. I used to cut match heads from the sticks, pack them tight into small cylinders (like M-80 housings) and make a fuse. They would explode, but the burning match heads would fly all over the place...
I once hid my aunt's unsmoked cigarettes from a pack all over her house. I put one in the half cup of coffee she was drinking and in a carton of milk in the fridge... boy did I get in trouble! And at that time, trouble meant OUCH! She was p**ssed! That's the last time I did that sort of thing.
Now that one is funny... a little dangerous, but funny. Have you seen what match heads do when you light them en masse like that? It's kind of like a fourth of July firework. I used to cut match heads from the sticks, pack them tight into small cylinders (like M-80 housings) and make a fuse. They would explode, but the burning match heads would fly all over the place...
I once hid my aunt's unsmoked cigarettes from a pack all over her house. I put one in the half cup of coffee she was drinking and in a carton of milk in the fridge... boy did I get in trouble! And at that time, trouble meant OUCH! She was p**ssed! That's the last time I did that sort of thing.
To clarify, I only put one match head in at a time. I erred by implying multiple ones in the same stick. Living in a lumber town, if there was one thing we feared it was fire. Yeah, if you confined a bunch of them, they'd go up pretty good. I have to give my dad credit on the bed explosion: he had quit ten years before, and he was smiling when he said, "If you want to load your mother's cigarettes, just don't load ones she's likely to light up in bed." Then again, the old man had a pretty good sense of humor. When he was a new manager at the mill, the old hands (who loved to send the new guy for the lumber bender, the board stretcher, etc.) asked him for a sawdust pump. My father went to a hardware store, bought a brand new pitchfork, tied a ribbon around it and presented it to them with a smile. He got a lot of respect from them.
In college we learned a good method of dealing with obnoxious drunks. Usually someone chewed. We'd switch the boor's beer with a spit bottle when he wasn't looking.
Now it's down to, depending on the state, between 16-20% .
The number of people who smoke every day ranges from 22% (Kentucky) to 7.7% (Utah), with the national average at 15.6%
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The US rate is about half the world rate. More than half the adults smoke in Nauru and Guinea.
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Even the armed forces went along with smoking back then.Right after arriving at Navy boot camp we were offered a chance to buy cigarettes,even though I was only 17,and strictly speaking,not old enough to buy them.The real bargains for smokers came after we went aboard ship and went to sea.Once we were outside the three mile limit,the ships store could sell smokes without the federal tax stamps,so called "sea stores" as we called them.Regular sizes smokes such as Camels and Luckys cost 90 cents a carton,king sized,such as Pall Malls,were a dollar,and filter tips were $1.10.That is not a typo,those prices were per carton,not per pack.Almost everyone smoked,and our work spaces were routinely smoke filled.
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