this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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I don't want to make any assumptions about your age, but I think a lot of people in north america have forgotten or weren't alive to experience the smoking world.
You used to just get handed an ashtray at a restaurant. You would just smoke at your desk at the office. Basically there were ashtrays and lighters within arms reach at any moment. Industrial design was to cater to the reality that everyone was smoking pretty much all the time.
If you went back in time and told someone from 1950 that you couldn't smoke inside, what the cost adjusted price of cigarettes were, that cars don't have ashtrays or lighters... I think they would genuinely think we had lost the cold war.
So, yes, they're still making money. But they went from an active participant in the engineering of society to merely an industry selling a product. I think there are very compelling parallels.
As a kid, I remember flipping open and closed the armrest ash trays on the backseat doors of our car while running back and forth across the seat because we didn't have to be buckled in or in child seats. I didn't think about what it meant then, because ashtrays were everywhere. I also remember being proud to make a pottery ashtray in school for my grandpa. We were encouraged to encourage our elderly to smoke more!
Now I live in CA where smoking isn't allowed most places, even outdoors, and traveling to Europe is so jarring because people smoke everywhere outside.
It's wild to me they used to smoke in hospitals and airplanes and restaurants!
I remember smoking on international flights around ‘98 or so, just before they banned it. I’ve long since quit, but it’s wild to think that was once a thing.