When did the effects of smoking become accepted by the general populous?
Posted by purplehp@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 35 comments
Obviously now it's pretty well-known and accepted that smoking tobacco is bad for you. I know there were studies and reports coming out in the 50s and 60s, and earlier, but when were these negative side effects accepted more broadly by the general public in the UK?
When did it start being considered socially unacceptable to smoke inside at someone else's house? Or around children at home? When did most workplaces ban smoking in the office? I've been watching The Office (UK) recently and was surprised to see "staff" smoking in the break room! I'm in my 30s for context.
hhfugrr3@reddit
I mean everyone knew long before The Office came out. I remember pestering my dad to give up because it was bad for him in the early 1980s - fun fact he did indeed die of lung disease albeit 35 years after he gave up! Doctors told him his smoking was almost certainly the cause.
At school we were told about the dangers of smoking. People just did it with the thought that "it won't happen to me" or simply by burying their heads in the sand and ignoring the warnings.
Educational-Angle717@reddit
I'd say early 2000's - I'm a 90's kid and I distinclty remember going to smokey pubs as a kid, also my old man would come home and although not a smoker his jacket would reek of it.
togtogtog@reddit
It happened a bit at a time.
And at different speeds for different people.
When I was young, teachers smoked in classrooms, doctors smoked in hospitals, they sold sweet cigarettes and pipes, people had ashtrays on their coffee tables and smoked in the car with their kids there. You offered a packet of cigarettes around, or even had a box of cigarettes on the coffee table for people to take. It was in every part of life. My hair and clothes smelt of stale cigarette smoke all the time. Everyone knew it was bad for you, but it was the equivalent of eating highly processed food, not exercising or drinking alcohol. When everyone does it, it doesn't seem so bad. And people were full of stories of their granddad living to 100 even though he smoked 40 a day.
Then they started to have 'no smoking' areas in cafes and planes and cinemas. Of course, the smoke drifted everywhere anyway, but at least there wasn't someone smoking right next to you.
It was in the 1980s when I politely asked someone if they minded if I smoked in their flat and they said NO!!! I was really shocked! No one ever minded you smoking in their home. It was a bit rude to not allow people to do it.
The smoking ban really did change things. It changed people's attitudes to smoking around others and highlighted the dangers of passive smoking, which were never really talked about before. People only thought about it being bad for the person who was smoking.
ice-lollies@reddit
I think it must have been the smoking ban that really did it.
It was starting to change before then. Everyone knew at that point it was bad for people but it was just so common. I remember taking patients to the smoking room in the hospital (as a student nurse) and we would sit and smoke together. So that must have been approx 1994?
And I remember various pubs and clubs would have the Marlboro people come around and give out free cigarettes. Mad really.
purplehp@reddit (OP)
Ah thanks, this is helpful. I remember my grandad, who really didn't like smoking, thought it was so rude to not allow someone to smoke in your house!
togtogtog@reddit
Hospitality was about making people feel welcome, relaxed and able to follow their own habits.
EyeAware3519@reddit
In the late 90s when the advertising ban came in was when the government really started to try and prevent people from smoking . Before that it was more a "this will kill you but do it if you want" attitude. I remember going to festivals in the mid 90s and advertising reps from the cigarette companies would be handing out free 5 packs, I also had posters of F1 cars on my wall as a kid with cigarette branding all over them, there would be massive billboards in towns and your local newsagent where kids would go to get sweets after school would be plastered in cigarette logos. Crazy times.
terryjuicelawson@reddit
I started University in 2001, at the Freshers' event there were reps for Camel lights giving out free 20 packs! The only thing they asked was if we smoked already, and didn't give them to people who didn't. I just got everyone I knew to grab a pack for me if they could, and did a lap multiple times. Mad they allowed it.
Ok-Answer-7138@reddit
Yeah the advertising was like the last thing to go... Magazines, billboards and F1 cars all stopped showing cigarettes by the end of the new millennium
religionisanger@reddit
I was born mid 80s, it was a fairly well known that cigarettes caused cancer and was continually repeated in schools to prevent children from taking up smoking.
When I was younger (this sounds ridiculous now) it was “cool” to smoke and lots of children did it quite heavily. I would say perhaps a third of my friends smoked from various ages (mostly 11+). Interestingly almost all of them stopped. I also know one guy who got COPD at 32.
I’m so thankful that vibe and association with being a bit defiant has completely gone now. One of the things which has definitely improved as an adult, stupid, dangerous shit is no longer considered cool… Now it’s just ridiculous tick tock trends where kids try and hold their breath for 20 minutes without suffocating.
Ok-Answer-7138@reddit
I dunno mate, the vapes that kids are puffing nowadays are pretty degenerate too
religionisanger@reddit
I donno if it’s cool in the same way though, I don’t really know though, I’m not down with the kids. Smoking was sort of the coolest thing you could do in my school, I remember kids smoking near the bike sheds and getting caught and running away. I tried smoking a few times, I just found it completely awful though. So glad it didn’t stick really, haha.
It shows how shit the pull is, once smoking isn’t fashionable, they all stop (providing they aren’t addicted). I remember someone at my work in their mid 30s saying: “I want to quit but smoking is so fucking cool”. Haha. Something a bit ironic and self aware about that statement.
RoyofBungay@reddit
Interesting point. Are we at the point where vaping is considered mildly harmful as was smoking in the 50s and 60s.
Individual-Rope-3769@reddit
Late 90s early 00s was when I really noticed it changing. Mutterings before that, but I was too young.
Ok-Answer-7138@reddit
That's about right, although I was a very young kid at that time, I remember seeing cigarette commercial billboards and people smoking in pubs, hell some people even smoked on trains and buses although the other passangers would often remind them "no smoking here" I imagine the early 90s would have been a world apart to modern smoking laws and public perception
Tactical-Chunderer@reddit
At school in the 90s we were taught about the harms, but the staff room still smelled of fags. It was still kind of accepted even though everyone knew it was harmful. Some people would have ashtrays in their house for guests, even though they didn’t smoke themselves. There was still a smoking carriage on some trains around 2005.
Obviously it’s bad for you, and I’m glad I stopped, but sometimes I really miss being able to light up anywhere.
IamNATx@reddit
I'm in my 30s and remember being in public places where it was OK to smoke indoors. The tide has definitely turned within our lifetime.
TomLondra@reddit
P O P U L A C E
purplehp@reddit (OP)
Lmao oops
Cosmicshimmer@reddit
I worked somewhere that had a smoke room in the early 00’s. I can’t remember what year they closed it.
Shrimp_Watch101@reddit
In junior school in the late '70s, I remember our headmaster devoting an entire assembly to the dangers of smoking.
At one point, he lit up a cigarette and blew it into a handkerchief. The hanky turned all sooty, and he said "See! That's what's going into your lungs!"
I'm now wondering if some sleight of hand was involved, but it looked very impressive at the time.
Didn't stop Wayne from boasting about nicking his mum's fags, though.
Scarred_fish@reddit
This was my experience too.
During my time at school from 70s to 80s, smoking went for being something kids did to be "cool" to the smokers being the morons who got the piss ripped out of them.
GlumAd9856@reddit
Really? When I was in school in the 90s it was still very much the bad/cool kids that smoked.
Scarred_fish@reddit
I think it depends on location too. There were some kids who came to secondary from other place who seemed to think that way.
Never lasted long!
fickle_tartan@reddit
I was born in the late 80s and it's always been known to me that it's bad for you. Didn't stop me from starting in my teens because I was an idiot, but it still doesn't stop people now!
Lots of places had already been banning of their own accord for various reasons, sometimes safety (see the Kings Cross tube fire for an example), leading up to the actual indoor smoking ban, but it was still completely normalised in places like pubs/clubs/music venues.
purplehp@reddit (OP)
Thanks, yeah I read about that tube ban, interesting the time gap between that and the indoor smoking ban in 2007.
fickle_tartan@reddit
A lot of companies had implemented their own bans in that 20 years though, while it was still widely accepted in pubs/clubs/venues etc, it was much less common to be allowed elsewhere.
My first job was in 2005 and there was no smoking allowed anywhere in the building, the shopping centre in my city banned it in I think 2001, less and less restaurants had smoking areas too. The vast majority of airlines around the world had banned it by the late 90s, most public transport authorities would likely have been the same, I don't remember ever seeing anyone smoke on a bus, for example.
Like in your example of the Office, it was a very large office complex so it wouldn't be weird for it to have a smoking room/a staff room that allowed it, but wouldn't have allowed it in the actual office anymore, and probably had non-smoking staff rooms too.
It had been gradually getting less and less acceptable in public spaces for decades, the law change just tipped it over for the last of the businesses/workplaces that didn't want to change. Pubs especially were incredibly concerned that people would stop coming if they couldn't smoke indoors and were very resistant to a total ban. Some places still to this day do weird shit to meet loopholes so people can smoke inside.
Still-BangingYourMum@reddit
People still try to defend smoking by saying they "Don't inhale the smoke"
Dissidant@reddit
Socially accepted? Between roughly the 1930's through to 1950's the tobacco giants were hiring actual health professions to promote their product as "healthy" ffs 😀
I was born in the 80's there seemed to be more of a thing about not doing it around children growing up, going into the 90's you started seeing it less indoors depending on who
DameKumquat@reddit
By end 90s, workplaces generally only allowed smoking in one official smoking room - the days of the staff room door opening at school and a fug of smoke coming out ended earlier in the 90s, partly because fewer adults smoked and more of them didn't do it in public.
80s workplaces varied - some people grumbled if their office didn't allow smoking at the desk. My parents didn't smoke and their friends didn't in our house, but did elsewhere. All pubs were smoky - there was one non-smoking pub in London when I moved here in 1995. That was around the time smokers would ask to smoke in your room at college but expect a no, rather than being miffed at a no.
AirlineSevere7456@reddit
My dad was an amateur athlete back in the early 60s and it was sage advise to avoid smoking to perform better. The link to lung cancer was well known at that point. Smoking during pregnancy was to be avoided around the 70s and breathing second hand smoke was a thing in the 80s, but wasn't until the late 90s most offices were no smoking, pubs and restaurants were later.
SinfulSoftiez@reddit
It shifted in phases not all at once
50s–60s people knew smoking was risky but still did it everywhere 70s–80s the vibe changed, more warnings, less glam 90s indoor bans started hitting offices and public spaces 2000s it became straight up rude to smoke around kids or inside homes
by mid 2000s lighting up indoors felt like using a flip phone in 2026 just outdated and kinda wild
purplehp@reddit (OP)
Thank you! It's interesting to me how the feeling changed amongst smokers as well, like when did they start thinking 'maybe I shouldn't smoke inside as other people might not smoke so might not like to be around it?'
AnneKnightley@reddit
I don’t know about offices or homes as I grew up with non smokers but I can tell you the smoking ban came into place around 2007. The first few months of uni if I went to a bar I had to wash my clothes later due to the stench. Later that year it wasn’t an issue.
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