by Wayne Leon Learmond

Created on: December 12, 2009   Last Updated: February 07, 2010

My own Father died as a direct result of the cigarettes he smoked in the past.  At one point in his life he was smoking sixty, yes, SIXTY cigarettes a day.  Not only was this expensive and a burden on my Mother, who had to pay for nearly every day for my Father's habit, leaving her purse short of money, but the health risks to us all {as there where four of us in the home including my Mother} was always there. Of course, this was back in the 1970s, when passive smoking was not known about at all then.  Back in the 70s - and indeed the 80s - smoking was not really looked upon, or taken seriously enough, as a habit that could ruin your health and ultimately kill you.

During the 70s especially, smoking was a 'national pastime'.  We saw people smoking on TV Shows, and films. You could not go onto public transport without the bus, or the cab, smelling of cigarette smoke.  Indeed, back then, people smoked like chimneys, paying little regard to their own health, or the health of others around them who did not smoke.

Cigarettes where portrayed in magazines by models, as 'the done thing', and attitudes where firmly against anti smoking. Advertisements of cigars and cigarettes on TV, or the radio, where the 'norm'  {unthinkable these days} because that was the type of society we lived in then. Smoking was looked upon as a debonair and sophisticated thing to do.  All the top actors and actresses smoked back then, with no one blinking an eyelid to the health risks involved.

We wanted to be like them, we wanted to feel sophisticated, and to look intelligent. Cigarettes gave people the confidence of feeling and looking 'cool'.  If smoking was good enough for famous people to do back then, then it was good enough for the rest of us.  Even politicians would be seen in Parliament, puffing big cigars or cigarettes {even pipes too} as pipe smoking was looked upon as holding a long-held special tradition in the UK.  The tobacco companies made a killing, literally, on people smoking, and their coffers were always full.

We jump thirty years or so years ahead now, and where do we stand as far as smoking is concerned?  Well, I for one, if I where the same age back in the 70s as I am now {46} would never have been able to write this article. It just wouldn't have got off the ground, because smoking was so inherent, so ingrained into the psyche of people within the UK.  But knowing what we know now about smoking, our attitudes

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