| | I am not (nor can ever be) a smoker, due to that whole heart failure thing, but you can’t tell me that smoking doesn’t at least look cool. Granted, I’m from the era where people smoking everywhere was on the decline, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t have TWO smoking lounges in our proud, lung cancer filled high school (one for students, the other for teachers/staff). Interestingly enough, we really didn’t think about the legal smoking age—18. Actually, there weren’t that many 18-year-old seniors in my class. I was one, but there were probably about 9 others in my huge class of 95 students.
So that means, not only were the administrators ignoring the law (and smoking away in their own offices!), the police didn’t particularly care either. Okay, we only had one police officer, and he was a janitor during the day, then at 2 pm, he changed into his police uniform. I suppose the police force liked those coffin nails too.
Then, there were the really underage kids—junior high and younger. We all saw them, and aside from the occasional comment that those kids looked way too young to be smoking, we didn’t even think about it. You could go into the corner store and buy a carton of your favorite brand (supposedly for your parents, and sometimes it actually would be!), and they sometimes weren’t too strict on kids coming home with a couple of six-packs of Bud (for the parents, of course.)
You could smoke in offices; the Dairy Queen in which I worked (in the kitchen, on the register, in the back office, in the restaurant area, dammit, if you had ‘em, you could smoke ‘em!) I even remember when you could smoke on public transportation. (Okay, I was 3, but you’d think in 1978, you could still smoke anywhere on God’s green and black tar earth). Of course, there were always the stogie smokers, and those who were probably playing along with the whole “Dave’s not here, man.” Because of how the windows opened then, you could basically open the whole damn side and stick your body out to holler at whomever. Nowadays, only the tops open, which sometimes makes me miss the good ol’ days of dangerously opening windows. When it’s hotter than hell, those little top-opening windows just don’t cut through the funk, I’ll tell you what.
Now, due to all the horribleness of smoking (no, I’m not saying smoking’s good, but follow along for a bit.) There are those horrible Truth ads on TV, but I’ll be damned if they ever go after big LIQUOR! I mean, why they are never pestering the people at Busch beer about the fact that those who drink their product will most certainly shorten their lives by a noticeable amount. But I suppose drink shitloads of liquor (and driving!) is a hell of a lot healthier than smoking.
And, to for your enjoyment, here are some wonderful ads from yesteryear when we didn't know that smoking and amphetamines would kill us! (Of course, you can't help but notice whom I'm listening to right now, either! No, I'm not judging....how could I judge? Me, the picture o' health!)
  
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