Evolving Attitudes Toward Smoking

If you're over the age of 40, you can probably still remember a time when smoking was an accepted part of our society and was hardly considered the scourge on our society it has become today. Movies and television were full of actors and actresses surrounded by smoky rooms who in-between their love-scenes and action packed car chases would always find time to stick small white sticks of tobacco between their 3rd & 4th fingers, acting as a prop for sophisticated banter or rough-house Mafia hits. As much as life imitates art the streets too seemed to be festooned with smokers with small plumes of willowy smoke erupting from every other person on the street. Conversations would be interrupted by the shuffling of cigarette packets, the well practiced hand-cover and head bend as people lit up and puffed out. That odd expression of uncomfortable concentration as the first puff was taken and the exaggerated draw. Your regular Joe could become his own 'DeNiro' or 'Brando' with one single puff. The cigarette could be held with panache, sophistication or even with a threatening air. A smoky mood ring of sorts for your everyday person.

'Do you have a light?' was a constant refrain on the streets and dollars and dimes could buy you a week's worth of smokes instead of a percentage of your mortgage. Restaurants would simply segregate smokers by banishing them to the left or right or back of a restaurant in the fervent hope that the rest of society wouldn't notice the invasive smoke that would inevitably come wafting across their tables onto their food or into their lungs. Where a non-smoker could find themselves sitting literally feet from a smoker. With money being the factor that drives most things in society, restaurants, diners and other entertainment and food establishments had little choice but to put up with smokers, lest they lose their business and certainly there seemed to be a far higher percentage of smokers back then so businesses hands were tied unless the Government made it illegal to smoke in eateries, which thankfully is where we stand today.

As times change so does Societies views on what is and isn't acceptable practice in today's society. With Murder, Arson, Rape, Child-Pornography and kidnapping having been satisfactorily added to the list of things that society deems offensive, illegal and immoral, so too now is smoking. The Smoker, a once proud creature now cast in the light of the antisocial cast-off or the low-class villain. The very act of smoking now eliciting bad vibes from pretty much everyone.

So here we are in 2008 and it's yet another year where we are constantly seeing TV. Advertising squarely taking aim at attacking the tobacco industry. Compellingly nasty surgical scenes showing some of the more distasteful effects of smoking to home-video's of parentless children bemoaning the loss of their pack-a-day parents to the latest ads showing a woman who steadily lost the tips of most of her fingers after a smoking-habit that threatens to leave her useless in working society. So why the sudden interest in getting us to stop smoking.

Money being the compelling factor in most things, perhaps it is that smoking has found its way more and more to the lower-income households of America who don't necessarily have the best medical health care plans, if any. Can we really believe that the Government is so interested in keeping us healthy? Where's the money in that! With low-income smokers more than likely relying on Medicare to fix the effects of their addictions it seems a sure bet that the Government is having to foot the bill for more and more of these misguided smoking souls and so to counter the effects of low-income smokers not having medical coverage have taken to the airways to warn us of the nastier effects of smoking. Of course this is a rather cynical view but it pays to be cynical and doubtful of people's/Governments intentions in this day and age. It's certainly a good and healthy thing that we should all be encouraged to either stop smoking or never take up what is according to the 'Centers for Disease Control and Prevention' responsible for killing over 400,000 American's each year with a variety of Cancer inducing nastiness that can affect pretty much all of the internal organs of the body.

Source:
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/factsheets/cig_smoking_mort.htm