[tobtoh]

As someone in the Gen X demographic who has never smoked, I've watched the anti-smoking campaigns and shift in attitudes towards smoking with interest - particularly how resistant smokers were to initially giving up smoking.

I feel like eating meat is going to be my generations equivalent of smoking. Intellectually, I agree that eating meat is bad for the environment, cruel to animals (esp industrial farming) etc ... but I can't see myself giving up eating meat.

[rhn_mk1]

Did you notice what drove the change in attitudes towards smoking?

[tluyben2]

Well, in my country (where tax in cigarettes etc was already very high; no one cared) it was not being allowed to smoke almost anywhere anymore, then, when that became normal (many people did it anyway for a few years until the fines got too high), people who used to smoke and everyone else found it smelly and then, way way way way behind that somewhere, something with health.

[libertine]

I think it was part policy making part witnessing the end-game for a lot of smokers.

The cool factor goes out the window.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Partly, it was generational. Gen X grew up hearing the evils of smoking in the 70s (TV and radio ads were banned as early as 1971), then with great admonition in the 1980s.

1982 was the year that the US Surgeon General announced that second-hand smoke was dangerous. That was the beginning of the end. Then shortly after the lawsuits started.

Boomers and the generation before did not have much of that influence in their formative years, even though warning labels were put on cigarette packages in 1965, they were mostly ignored because… marketing.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/settlement/ti...

[robbrown451]

I'm with you on your second paragraph, except that I can totally see myself giving up meat if there was a substitute that tasted just as good.

Fur coats is something that seems to be almost entirely given up, but part of it is that fake fur is quite good.

[theshrike79]

The difference between stopping smoking and stopping eating meat is that it's perfectly possible to eat meat in moderation than it is to smoke just a few.

I haven't eaten any 4-legged animals with the exception of bacon and the odd burger here and there (a chicken burger just doesn't cut it) for 3-4 years.

I mostly eat fish and poultry and have been accidentally vegan a number of days.

I'd be completely fine paying 2x the price for beef if the animals were handled in a sustainable and humane way.

[amanaplanacanal]

Looking at global fishing stocks, I don’t think they would survive if most of the world went that direction.