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by rhn_mk1 1722 days ago
Did you notice what drove the change in attitudes towards smoking?
3 comments

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

The cool factor goes out the window.

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...