Would you be a smoker if you were living in the 60s or 70s?

[DebbieD78]

Looking at TV ads for smoking and they all seemed to be aimed at women. I wonder if I'd have been taken in by them and taken up the habit if i'd been in my teens or 20s forty years ago.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTFtciWa618
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B3g80Q03t8
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rGs89IueTk

No, the whole family gave up in the 50s/60s when my great grandfather died of some smoking-related illness. Besides, I guess it still smelled disgusting back then.

My Nana is 85 and the midwife lit a cigarette for her, just after she had pushed each of her children out - different times. I'm a desperate sneaky smoker.

Probably.

I buy all kinds of shit if it's got a swanky advert.

Yes, as most people did back then, i think. I haven't smoked for three years.

presumably yes.

hard to imagine though. I loathe smoking mainly because my dad smoked all through my childhood and my identity is based on being as unlike him as I can manage.

Yes. I smoked from 1978 to 1999. So glad to be over it.

I started smoking in 1975 and quit for good in 2005 [did have a few smoke free periods during this time]. My parents never smoked but many other people did.
It's hard to describe to young people nowadays how completely normal and socially acceptable smoking was during the 60's and 70's and how far we have come since then. Other than walking behind or past people smoking in the street [which doesn't really worry me]it is possible to totally avoid cigarette smoke nowadays.

Did people who work in shops used to be able to smoke while in the shop, on the till or whatever?

I do not know about that one Debbie - new meaning to 'smoked ham' :)

People were allowed a cigarette in hospitals as somebody has already mentioned - the midwife - crazy!

"Did people who work in shops used to be able to smoke while in the shop, on the till or whatever?"
No, they took a 'fag break', just as there were 'tea breaks/coffee breaks'.

I remember sitting in the cinema and there was a smoking and non smoking side or how about trains walking through the smoking carriages - unimaginablr now

Dont smoke but yes life was somehow differen then

I'm not surprised shops allowed smoking. I didn't know the answer Debbie

Oh definitely yes, I absolutely love cigarettes.

oh lord yes. Haven't smoked for years now, but still miss it.

Not quite a shop Debbie but I worked for a large travel agent many moons ago and we smoked at our desks in full view of the customers. Plus if a customer came in who was booking a holiday and smoked the agent would stand at the counter puffing away with him whilst doing the booking!!! The place stank and the ceiling was yellow....saying that I still enjoy the odd ciggie in the garden!

Did people who work in shops used to be able to smoke while in the shop, on the till or whatever?

In some shops yes they did smoke and whilst serving customers at the counter. In other shops I guess there where different rules and fag breaks where taken

Thing was then prams where left outside the shops with the baby inside the pram, it was a common site to see a pram left outside a shop whilst the parent went in and purchased whatever they had gone in for. Woolworths there used to be a line of prams

I recall my Father enjoying a cigar on an aeroplane in 1982. Not sure when the smoking ban was introduced on aeroplanes.

Is smoking allowed in first class?

I only started work in 2000 and for 20 minutes every afternoon at my first job we were allowed to fervour ashtrays out.

I flew with a cheap middle Eastern airline in 1996, transatlantic, and the whole back section was for smoking, we sat right at the back and puffed away till we felt sick just for the novelty of it. The cabin crew were all smoking too as they put out the food trays!