There have been, like, five societal things that have improved since the 90s, and banning smoking in basically all public spaces is one of them.
I can’t even imagine air travel before the smoking ban. Mega yuck.
It wasn’t pleasant. I was a kid and didn’t fly much. but I did experience it.
Because everyone smoked everywhere, you were at least used to it. Airplanes are super well ventilated, not enough to make it pleasant, but enough that you weren’t feeling like you were going to die when they all lit up.
It wasn’t pleasant.
Once hitched a ride and the driver and his wife where heavy smokers that they even had the air on recycle instead of taking in fresh air. 2nd worst ride ever, I got out as quick as I could.
what was the 1st worst?
I got a ride from a courier who was driving as if the van was on fire. He looked at his watch and said “lunch time!”. Then he held the steering wheel with his knee, and grabbed a 'Hoegaarden Wit" (beer) from behind his chair. Opened it with the bottom of his lighter and drank the whole bottle in one go. Did not blink an eye, grabbed another from behind the chair and repeated the process. Then only said “So !” and acted like it was perfectly normal. I jumped out when he halted at a traffic light. Looked back but It was an un-marked white van otherwise i’d happily reported him to police and his boss.
My mother was a heavy smoker and slight of build, in the winter she’d crack the window 1/4 inch and not any further until i was steadily coughing.
Jet’s are different than cars though, they cycle air/heat from the engines at pretty high speed. The cabin air is continually refreshed/pressurized.
I’ve lived through both eras.
Take all the tech companies away from the far-right, raise taxes on the wealthy, break up the media monopolies, overturn citizens united, ensure one full-time income can support a small family, restore actual journalism, make universities places for education and research again….
And you can smoke wherever the fuck you want. Do it in my living room for all I care.
Sorry, but this is a really ableist take. Not everyone is healthy enough to tolerate secondhand smoke; I would rather live in a literal 1984-style dictatorship than somewhere that smoking everywhere was normalized. There’s not a political system out there worse than feeling like you have the flu every day for the rest of your life.
Are you perchance a race and gender that hasn’t historically been persecuted under fascism? There are a few things worse than a flu.
I think you’re underestimating the flu a bit there. Pretty hard to fight the power when you struggle to remain upright. At least if you’re healthy under fascism there’s, like, a chance things will get better. I can’t imagine a fate worse than being sick all the time and unable to do anything about it because, ya know, you’re too sick to do anything about it.
If you can’t imagine a fate worse than that go read a history book
RIGHT, your comfort is what’s most important. Blocked. 😀
Okay then.
I recall reading that in some ways air quality was better when smoking in airplanes was legal because they had to cycle air through the outside through ventilation systems.
Now they don’t so the air is more stagnant and circulates germs etc.
I have no idea if that’s actually the case, or if so, if that’s actually better. But it was a point I hadn’t considered.
In hindsight, it feels like the sort of “study” that a tobacco company would put out. Like a petrol company funding one that says “climate change is good actually!”
It’s not like anything was stopping the airlines from continuing to run the ventilation systems even after smoking was banned on flights.
But think about poor old $$$
Also smoking bans are so usa centric. Going to Europe is insane because they are so insanely rude with how they smoke compared to the usa
I remember flying into Germany in '06 and being able to light up anywhere in the airport, went back in '13 or '14 and they had little booths.
I was in Germany in the early 00s and I hard associated the Frankfurt airport with the smell of smoke. Went back a few years ago and I almost didn’t recall things because that olfactory link wasn’t there anymore.
Wiiiide variety over Europe. You gotta specify
I’ve been in a good few European countries and it hadn’t differed in any.
Oh I guess that covers all of 'em then.
The UK has very little smoking in public.
Germany had a shit-ton, though it has decreased quite a bit.
It was enough of them that I felt comfortable making a generalization
Depends where, and sometimes it varies wildly in the same country.
Hamburg, I didn’t see a single smoker. Berlin, fucking rife with them
Not just US. A few years back japan banned it in restaurants (but not bars) and public buildings unless there’s an actual smoking room in them.
Japan’s smoking situation has gotten so much better over the last few decades. Which is good, because it used to be everywhere.
Continental Europe maybe but as a Briton it’s pretty shit to be a smoker here. Extremely expensive unless you go black market, you have to stand outside in the pissing rain in virtually all cases, and people can be very judging about it.
Source: ex smoker
Banning smoking on planes is NOT a fumble
Omg yes. I am old enough to remember the tail end of the period when smoking was still allowed on planes and JFC it was awful. They had a smoking “section” but it was still an open cabin so you could smell smoke everywhere. And if you were in the same or next row as a smoker you couldn’t escape it for the whole flight. Flying sucks now, but removing smoking is absolutely an upgrade.
But they gave you something. This could easily be replaced by some soda, or anything else. Meanwhile, leg room is no more, and you’re only getting your own thoughts to contend with now.
Every flight I’ve been on offers a drink and snack.
I’ve only flown British once. I got two biscuits and a very small water. Otherwise, nothing. Zero.
I worked for an airline for awhile. What you get on the plane is determined by the length of the flight usually. The longer you are on the plane the more things you will get. And of course the class matters.
Most non budget carriers give you a soda and a snack. But you also have to realize that they aren’t GIVING you anything - you pay for that, always. It’s just marked up and built into your ticket price. Leg room is 100% still available, you just have to pay more. The ticket for that is STILL cheaper (adjusted for inflation) than it was when lots of leg room was standard.
People who are too young or, frankly, not thinking hard enough really do romanticise what the world was like when people could smoke fucking everywhere because people really did smoke fucking everywhere. Restaurants and pubs had a visible smog in the air, the odor permiated all flavours and everything was slightly sticky unless it was wiped clean a few minutes before. Being trapped on a bus with a bunch of smokers was nightmarish enough, but being at the back of a plane - the cheap seats - where air was very, very slowly circulated front to back was hell, especially for asthmatics.
your clothes stunk unless you hung them out the next day. Disgusting addiction.
Now everything smells like Green Apple.
I grew up in the 90s and caught the tail end. My god it was nasty. That yellow layer of buildup on everything 🤢
I love how Japan handles it. You can only smoke in designated areas, but a loooot of buildings have dedicated smoking rooms with built in filtration systems, which is more than you can say in the US. I’ve even seen old traditional ryokan hotels that have an indoor smoking room.
People don’t remember that the whole world used to smell like cigarettes.
Ever go to a casino in Las Vegas? Like that, but everywhere all the time.
Do they allow smoking inside at Las Vegas? I always wanted to go there. Not anymore if that’s the case
Yeah, you’re not going to find casino floors (with some minimal exceptions) smoke free in Vegas. Chain smoking slot grannies are like a majority of their revenue.
While your playing at the low risk $10 a hand blackjack table, Margaret is over there on the penny slot machine with her pile of cigarette butts betting $12 a spin, and spinning 100 times before your hand is over.
Even their airport smells like cigarettes. Honestly, the LV airport is the nastiest, dirtiest one I’ve ever seen (and not in a good way, lol)
the one thing i remember from the last time i was there was the penny slots at the departure gates… they literally want you to leave every cent you have behind
I was born in Vegas, and yeah, its ain’t just the airport. Like we’d go to Kmart or the laundry mat and there were slot machines. When I was 4 and moved to Phoenix that’s what I thought was so weird about Arizona was no slot machines.
Not sure, but even if they don’t any more. It might still just smell.
Can’t get that out easily without ripping up every carpet/fabric.
The world used to smell like Easter Europe
Ftfy
Used to? Oh you naive summer child.
Dude I’m 26 and got to smell the dying drag of that era. It doesn’t smell nearly as much like cigarettes, at least in my neck of the woods in SoCal don’t know how much the Finns or Franks smoke so mayhaps it’s different elsewhere.
I’ve got a dozen years on you and you’re lucky to have only caught the tail end of it. I had to put up with the whole world smelling until I was 18.
Fuck, don’t envy you on that one. I used to work estate sales and holy shit every third house smelt of dust and decades old cigarette smoke, felt like puking the entire time I was working those ones anytime they had a garage I was in there and not the house proper.
I’m a few decades older and grew up in Socal, so I got smoking everywhere (including my mom and aunt at home) and horrendous smog.
I don’t miss any of that ghastly nonsense.
Not everywhere are people so polite and kind. EVERYONE here lights up. People smoke in cafe’s, I cant eat in a burger place without smoke forcing me to cough.
They laugh at me for coughing, I’m allergic to the stuff.
It’s not out of kindness, it’s laws that many cities and states passed in the 00s to ban smoking in various places (and eventually everywhere indoors altogether in most places).
I think it’s a state and local level thing here though, so it’s going to vary by location. I’m referring to the US if it wasn’t clear.
I think it’s less so a matter of politeness or kindness and moreso because one of the few great projects within the US over the last 50 years was the war on smoking. From the banning of smoking adverts to the anti-smoking PSAs of the late 00s and 2010s there’s been a consistent push against cigarettes specifically, also it’s expensive with high taxes noone has the cash for that.
Anti spitting laws created to prevent the spread of tuberculosis, get people to switch from chewing tobacco to smoking cigarettes in the USA.
How did this even happen in America of all places anyway? I’d 100% vote for it here.
A mix of the collapse of the tabaco lobby, economics, and a general cultural trend away from addictive narcotics since it’s also affecting alcohol. Also I suspect the broad decriminalization of weed and it’s general cultural acceptance probably helps.
America used to embrace being woke. ;-)
Saying naive summer child is redundant. Summer child means naive.
I mean there’s a huge reason for the loss of luxury on planes that everyone conveniently forgets
Planes were EXPENSIVE, they were a luxury, and around the latter part of the 80s they figured out how to reduce the price. Tickets went from $500 to $50 for the exact same 1 hour flights to the exact same locations.
There’s a reason Ryanair became an instant success. People want to pay nothing for services rendered.
It’s not just that, they figured out a factory line that made the production cost of planes drastically drop too
They’re still not cheap to produce, but they went from exorbitantly expensive, might only have 10-25 flights per day to an airport has 1000s of flights per day
My stepfather was a lifelong smoker. He smoked a full pack of Marlboro reds every day, and my mom smoked a full pack of menthols. I calculated out how much they spent yearly on cigarettes alone and it came to over $5000, and that was in the late 90’s; it’s probably much higher these days. Both of them had been smoking since the 70’s.
When I talked to them about quitting, they both said that they enjoyed smoking too much, it’s a stress relief, it’s something to do, etc. They were aware of the health risks, but believed the risks were overblown and that emphysema is an “old person’s” disease.
Last year he was diagnosed with stage 3 emphysema. The man is a dyed-in-the-wool hard-as-nails army vet boomer, and his obstinate machismo made him ignore years of poor health and lung disease symptoms all to finally end up as an old person with an “old person’s” disease. Credit to him though, he did quit cold turkey the day his doctors delivered the diagnosis; the same obstinacy that pushed him to never give up smoking is what pushed him to quit. Me and my family love the hell out of him, and we’re glad that he finally quit, but it’s so aggravating that there are still so many people out there who discount the risks of smoking.
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In my country there were ads that showed a smoker who had emphysema as part of an anti-smoking campaign.
They described it like taking a deep breath and then exhaling just a small puff, then inhaling that puff and repeating forever until you die.
Sorry for your stepfathers diagnosis.
Every time sometime says they smoke a pack (if not more) a day, it blows my mind.
That’s twenty cigarettes. I mean Jesus Christ people, like how??
I’ve never been able to make it through a full cigarette before feeling nauseous and putting it out.
I’m aware how tolerance works, but 20 cigarettes every day just seems insane to me.
My mom smoked 2 packs a day until at least her mid 40s, after staring at age 10. I have no idea when she stopped because I went almost no contact after moving out at 17.
She appeared in excellent health until a massive stroke at 77. Barely recovered then died of the flu at 80. This is after years of going vegan and walking 10+ miles per day.
Mind you, she was antivax, trending heavily towards anti medicine and anti science. As a former very well regarded biochemist.
It’s almost an impressive feat… To be able to consistently smoke forty cigarettes per day every day, for decades.
I couldn’t agree more.
“We had it all” is the message some people get from “you could never get away from the bloody cigarette smoke”?
If you were on a plane they had food you didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for, they’d even do kosher and vegetarian options. Before that they would just give you something else you usually had to buy. The message is “boomers bitch and moan about how hard they worked when they had it easier than any generation before or since, especially white American boomers-they were handed luxury goods for free!”
No, you did have to pay an arm and a leg before entering the plane instead, and then you couldn’t even opt out of the toxic smoke that OP is finding so great.
All the post does is glorifying the past, like many boomers also like to do.
Unrelated to what we’re talking about, but I still remember briefly switching to Winstons in the 90s because I saw an ad with Frank Zappa smoking one on the back of a rolling stone magazine. I still remember that every time I see Winstons in any context.
It’s horrifying how effective that marketing was.
Well I coulda told you that…
Flying was also considered a luxury back then, but yeah keep whining about an generational difference while democracy is torn down around you.
A flight to France from NYC in 1955 was $310, which is the equivalent of about $3900 today. You can find that same flight for under $300 today.
Las Vegas to Los Angeles was only $13.70 or $171.88 in today’s money, you can find that for less than $50 today.
Even if you include the extra fees and everything today that were part of the base fare in the early days of flight, that only adds another 10% or so to the cost.
The reason that air travel today is so unpleasant is that it has been commodified. Airlines have to compete only on price, and it’s easy to search for the prices. Just 20 years ago it was extremely difficult for anybody except a travel agent to search for airlines prices. Because of that, people often stuck with a favourite airline or with whatever the travel agent recommended. Now, anybody can go to any number of sites and in a few seconds know every airline that flies between two cities with every schedule and every price.
Since every airline wants to make the sale, they make the price shown by the search the lowest one. Then, to get their profit margin back, they add on fees and make things that used to be built into the price.
The trend is reversing though. Especially on long haul international flights. Airliners are ordering planes with more premium seating and fewer economy seats. Not only does the average margin per passenger increases, but they also have to deal with fewer passengers on the ground which can lower off boarding and on boarding time.
Restrictions on in-flight smoking started in '88, when the oldest boomers were 43 and the youngest were
1424. The Greatest Generation were the ones who smoked like chimneys.The youngest boomers were about 25 not 14 in 1988.
You’re right, 24. My point still stands though
Portable cameras were NOT this good when airlines allowed smoking. You ever see a pic of a ps1/GameCube display at Walmart? This is before THAT.
What are you talking about? https://shootfilmco.com/blogs/shoot-film-co/the-most-popular-cameras-of-the-1970s
There are example shots, e.g. here’s one from the Nikon F2, which was introduced in 1971:
Well it’s a 747 and United flew those from 1970 to 2017. Not sure when they stopped allowing smoking on board, but I’m guessing it was allowed in the 70s?
its was on some airlines through the mid 90s.
I read an anecdote somewhere recently that the air in planes during flights has more germs in it now than it did in the smoking days because they had to filter the air so much more because of the smoke.
No clue if its actually true or not.
Not sure if it’s the bacteria or just having fresh air cycled though the caben. Apparently it saves the airlines millions as they don’t have to replace filters and the system runs at a reduced capacity. Good to know someone is benefitting
It also used to be obscenely more expensive to fly
you weren’t getting the equivalent of ryanairs £13 gatwick to holland flights
Prices to fly seem pretty obscene right now tbf. Transatlantic over $700 per seat round trip at my last look.
even with the recent uptick in prices it’s still a lot cheaper than it used to be
https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-of-flight-costs
I wonder if there will be a remembrance culture for the mass deaths caused by climate change like there is for germans with the holocaust. Like: “Grandma, why did great grandad not do anything to stop the death of hundreds of millions when everyone knew it was going to happen?”
I think you’re being a wee bit too optimistic about this whole future thing, emmissions are still rising and we’re heading into massive worldwide famines and droughts in the forseeable future.
Yes but humanity wont be wiped out, it will just suffer a lot. Maybe it will be billions of dead even, but we will figure something out as we always do and then we will say “wasnt so bad after all right?” and learn nothing from it.
90% of earths topsoil is at risk of depletion by 2050
Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030
Global human population has surpassed Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity.
Global carbon emissions are still rising
The world is likely to exceed a key global warming target soon but the earths albedo with the declining sea ice and lack of cloud cover will impact these numbers massively and isn’t being predicted for, which means that 4.5c above the baseline by 2060 is now possible.
Oh and this El Nino is so powerful the fucking graph needed to be made bigger today and all of the above is and will continue to be impacted by this as it progresses.
So yeah, unless we can somehow rapidly evolve physics defying magic to handwave all our problems away before basically everything dies, basically everything will die.
E/sp
You can put quite a lot of nines after the decimal point if more than 99% of people die without humanity reaching its lowest population in history, so the post you’re replying to is right that humans are likely to persevere, and knowing humans, there’s a good chance that if industrial civilisation starts again (which is less likely - you need lots of accessible cheap coal to make it worth putting up with rudimentary steam engines long enough to develop good ones), lessons won’t be learned and we’ll pollute ourselves to death again.
With no soil to grow food in and a climate too hot and unstable to support crop growth, we’re not going to be persevering for very long.
Humans have existed a lot longer than crop growth.
Cool cool, so what are we going to eat then?
With all the pollinators dying off over the next +1.5c, and 90% of the top soil depleted by 2050, and ever more erratic climates world wide, plants will not grow.
The oceans will very soon be so hot and acidic that the phytoplancton at the base of the oceans ecosystem, will dissolve. So sea food isn’t going to be an option either.
Oooh, maybe animals on land, right? Well, yeah no, without crops livestock is unsustainable and considering humans and livestock currently makes up 95% of the worlds mammal biomass and the remaining 5% can’t survive without food… looks like that’s not going to be an option for feeding the ‘persevering’ either.
2 people arent enough. Who is going to repopulate the Earth? Elon Musk? With what? His male buddies? They going to invent male pregnancy?
2 isn’t.
You’d need about 50 for a healthy diversity of genes.
But that is still only 0.00000055% of the current population
50? I thought the minimum was around 1 million, later retconned to like 200000?
Blaming Boomers might make you feel better for half a second but the truth is their political leaders mislead them too. There is a reason Trump saying he was going to “drain the swamp” appealed to so many people.
Boomers, lower class citizens, Republicans, Hispanics, whites etc are all people who deserve not to suffer.
If the priority is to minimize suffering then labels stop mattering because people start actually seeing the big picture. When you can’t see the big picture you up being mad at a ghost that’s been created in your head. You’re angry at something you will never be able to actually see or meet because you over-classify a classification.
I agree. You can only track a span of time when referring to a whole generation of people. As in, “something happened during that time”. It was not caused by all of the people included in the generalization. Most likely in the past, as it is today, it’s the 10% of the greed monkeys in any generation that you can point to, not the whole shebang.
Yeah it would be like blaming millennials for going to war with Iran or the 30% inflation that’s happened over the last 6 years or the massive changes that’s happened with the government.
Pointing fingers doesn’t change anything and if you believe a certain group caused the problems people are seeing today then what are the people today doing to fix it because they are next up to be blamed.
