Commentary on Smoking
I was surprised outside of the hotel at Mount Juliet in Ireland to see ashtrays, old fashioned glass ashtrays, set out for use, and meticulously clean. I can remember in the mid-1980's thirty years ago, keeping an ashtray on my desk for smokers. It was expected. (I had a nautical themed ceramic one that traveled from office to office with me, I wonder what happened to it?) Over the past 30 years smoking in public places has become politically incorrect. Smokers have become outcasts in modern society.
Certainly in the United States smoking in public places has been banned, restaurants, offices, retail stores, classrooms (Rollins College banned smoking in classrooms and closed the on campus bar the year I started there.) I have noticed a decline in smoking in public in Europe. Italy, England, and France were strongholds of public smoking, and change is taking place there.
Has smoking declined where you are?
Funny...I never seem to see people smoking....but at the grocery or drug store people in line always ask for them. I have one friend who smokes.
ReplyDeleteI myself like a cigar once or twice a year with a nice bourbon.
I can remember people smoking in line at the grocery store. The supermarket I shop at only sells cigarettes at the customer service desk.
DeleteYES, thank the dogs and cats! as a person with asthma, I cannot abide the smell.
ReplyDeleteRTG's father died of lung cancer; we believe many of RTG's health issues stem from his breathing his father's second-hand smoke over many years.
My father quit smoking in the early 1950's and died of lung cancer 60 years later.
DeleteSadly, tourists come here from countries (like the UK) where smoking is banned and smoke here (where it's banned here as well). "I'm on holiday. I'll do what I want." Our local government often looks the other way because they think they'll offend the tourists. It's infuriating. And, although I'm sure there are many less smokers than there used to be among the local population, it's still surprisingly popular. Smoking was banned in public places beginning in 2011. Sevilla mostly enforced the law. Fuengirola often does not.
ReplyDeleteThere is a stereotype of the "ugly ____" on holiday. Sadly based on a kernel of truth.
DeleteDeclined and severely restricted here, yet if I smell a whiff of smoke from a guy, I find it arousing. Here is a bad boy. I am not so keen on steam train vapers.
ReplyDeleteVapers are really an odd bunch. J smoked when we first met, but he exiled himself outside to do so.
DeleteYes.
ReplyDeleteAs a person who has never smoked, and lost a mother, sister and aunt to lung cancer, I'm thrilled about it.
And on aside note: it wasn't done purposefully, but I do not have single close friend who smokes. I think maybe I just gravitate towards non-smokers.
I can't identify any close friend who smokes. My sister and brother in law did the last I knew, but he is terribly ill and I think they have stopped.
DeleteI don't see a whole lot of smokers anymore. Every now and then, while grocery shopping, I have coughing fits because of inhaling a worker on break's smoke. Smoke doesn't care where it wafts. Smoking has been outlawed in my house for forty-five years now, and that included the parentals and any other person so inclined to kill themselves and others. Never took up the habit myself. Mother was a three pack a day user. It's amazing that only two of my sisters picked up the habit. I suppose the only thing that saved us was that it was back in the day when kids stayed outside for the most part. I see it so rarely now that I get startled when Lucy and Ricky light up :)
ReplyDeleteLots of changes over the last 30 years. I remember my grandmother smoking in the early 60's. She started smoking based on advice from her doctor in the 1940's, he told her smoking would strengthen her lungs.
DeleteNot a smoker, but I've been married three times, and the first two were smokers. Weird, but the menthol-type never bothered me. Second husband smoked a pipe. Another long-term relationship guy was also a smoker. Two uncles died of lung cancer: one was a smoker of Camel unfiltered; the other had never smoked. Luckily, my third husband (the keeper-26 years and counting), does not smoke, nor does anyone in my family.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was working in Kentucky, lung cancer was the number 1 cancer that women died from. Yet, it does not get the press. For my father, he had decades of work related environmental exposure to all kinds of nasty stuff, still lived to 89.
DeleteWe think that my uncle who died who was not a smoker had worked in an asbestos factory years ago!!!
DeleteOh yes, there's been a huge decline in smoking over the past 30 years. Me included!
ReplyDeleteHopefully making the world a healthier place
DeleteI haven't seen an ashtray in ages other than the antique stores they have heaps.
ReplyDeleteI don't know anyone who smokes.
I sometimes wonder where they all went
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