Story time. Last summer I flew from ATL to SFO on a brand new Airbus. Pretty cool plane! Halfway across the count I had the obligatory restroom break. In the head, I noticed an ashtray. I was confused -- "smoking has been banned in planes doe decades. Why is there an ashtray here?"

I flagged down a flight attendant and asked them. Their answer was that yes smoking is banned, and it's a $250 fine. But EVERY SINGLE TRIP from ATL to SFO, someone decided it is worth it and the ash trays give them a safe place to put it out. The flight attendants wait outside the lav after the smoke alarm goes off with the ticket.

> Apparently people smoked on submarines for a while.

More than ‘a while’. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4344412/:

“In the mid 1970s smoking was allowed virtually everywhere; by 2000 there were only two allowable smoking areas-each approximately 6 feet by 6 feet-one in the engine room and one up forward.

[…]

In 2009, a working group was established to prepare for a December 31, 2010 deadline for prohibiting smoking below decks on deployed submarines”

That paper also says:

“In 1993, based on reports of the dangers of secondhand smoke, Captain Stanley W. Bryant, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, announced a ban on smoking aboard the ship starting in July 1993 and proposed eliminating tobacco from the ship's store. These actions elicited a strong and swift tobacco industry response. As described by Offen et al., tobacco friendly members of Congress challenged the policies and enough pressure was generated to force the reversal of both the ban on smoking and the prohibition of cigarette sales aboard the ship”

Several years ago I had a brief stop at some airport-- maybe Atlanta? But they had an indoor smoking area. I smoked at the time so I followed the map, and you could see the smoking area from the balcony on the floor above.

It was a glass cube maybe 10 feet across, and it was crammed full of people. Completely full, like those Japanese trains. And there was a crowd of people outside waiting to get in.

I went outside. It was pretty nice, there was no one around.

Cinemas were the annoying ones for me, even more so than airplanes. I remember going to see E.T. when it came out and the cloud of smoke from all the parents puffing away made it hard to see the damned screen.

I don't know if sailors can smoke on an aircraft carrier, but with all that gas and bombs around, it seems like a no-brainer to ban it.

As a former Air Force brat, I remember the horrific stench of stale smoke in the AF office buildings. My parents were about the only adults I knew who didn't smoke. I bought my 72 Dodge in the 1980's, and it still smells like cigarettes.

Of course there were smoking and non-smoking sections on airplanes. The same air recirculated through the entire airplane, and the non-smoking section began the very next row after the smoking section.

Unfortunately we aren’t getting a handle on it because those friendly tobacco companies instead just pushed people to vaping instead.

It's also very dependent on where you live I think.

I'm in NY (not NYC) and it's rare to find anyone smoking.

When I visited Türkiye last year, I've never seen so much smoking in my life. Not just walking around the streets, but people smoking at restaurants that had seats outside. This could be a small place with 3-4 tables all within a couple of meters of each other.

It was one of my first thoughts too, but related to that somewhat is that it also amazes me how people used to be a lot more “daring” or “pragmatic” (the quotes indicating that I’m not quite sure what to call it) in a way that did not scare them to consider and weigh the risks and conclude that it was not only feasible and possible, but that it was also worth adding a smoking room to a hydrogen filled balloon.

There are many other similar examples of this “daring” that seems to have all but been neutered by globalist standardization that has all but destroyed actual diversity in the West and has seemingly lowered tolerances of and for risk.

I’m not sure if it’s quite the same and maybe it’s just a function of the technology levels of roughly up to the 1990s, but it feels like China in general has something similar to that same kind of “daring” today, based on the unique and innovative things I see in China.

I’ve been told by someone who was in the service that when smoking was no longer allowed on submarines, it made a huge difference in the cleanliness of machinery and thus how much work was required to maintain it.

Yeah, I’d love some of that goodness in my lungs, please.

> It’s really amazing just what extent people went to in order to smoke.

My parents' generation, the boomers, weren't really aware that smoking was bad. Even if some knew, I feel like it was mostly hidden from them. Look at any movie they'd watch in the west when they were young, people would be smoking everywhere: inside offices, inside cars, public servants at the town hall, etc. Smokers everywhere.

Once the studies eventually came out showing how bad it was, addicted people kept smoking but there's been way less new smokers.

Now I see my kid's gen (so the grand-kids of the boomers): hardly anyone is smoking. It's not a thing among that generation.

As to the gen Xer who used to smoke: most of friends in that segment are now vaping.

Addicts are typically going to be addicts: be it alcohol or tobacco. We're getting a handle on it for the boomers are now dying left and right and it's been a long time smoking ain't being portrayed as being cool anymore.