Nowadays… well, let’s just say that
there’d probably be a lot more protests
against all these restrictions were it not for
the fact that most long-term smokers have
either quit or died. More recent smokers
know they’re walking a tightrope – both
medicallyand socially. Smokingcan limitor
increase the cost of life or health insurance.
It cancost youa job. Smoking cankeepyou
out of relationships, unless your intended
partner also happens to be addicted. And
that’s the coreof how it’s changed. Smoking
is
now largely viewed as an addiction:
something out of your control, annoying
to others and, therefore, not all that cool.
How and when did all of this happen?
Two generations ago isn’t that long a time
and yet it seemed like everyone smoked.
You can see it in commercial art, radio
and TV of the era. For men, smoking
offered a way to embrace the tough-guy
Marlon Brando image: cool and hoody.
Just a decade before that, smoking was
part of being a hard-boiled private
detective, made famous in the fiction of
Raymond Chandler and Dashiell
Hammett. And it wasn’t just the guys.
Smoking was also an attractive option to
women, for whom it was an early sign of
liberation. It was considered daring and
assertive for a woman to smoke in public
or on a theatre screen. A lit cigarette and
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