Tobacco Crazy

I recently recalled an occasion when, as a businessman, I attended a meeting with a colleague at a clients. My colleague, a manager in his 20's, sat down to engage in a discussion and immediately produced from his pocket a small tin of miniature cigars. He opened it, removed a small and pungent cigar, placed it into his mouth and lit it with a quartz lighter he had produced from his waistcoat pocket. The blue-grey smoke drifted into the air, quickly filling the small boardroom whose table we sat around. No-one said a word. Why would they?

Forward 35 years. Imagine trying to do that now. It is utterly inconceivable that it would go unmentioned. Disbelieved perhaps, but ignored? This is the change in conscious awareness which now exists in relation to smoking. Consider this text from a 50's text book entitled The Modern Woman - Beauty, Physical Culture, Hygiene by Lillian Bradstock and Jane Condon in which the authors assert:

'Millions of moderate users find comfort daily in the use of tobacco. As long as the smoking is moderate no serious harm seems to be done. In fact, when one considers that the majority of medical men, whatever their special ideas and theories, smoke themselves, they can scarcely regard the practice as very harmful'.

I wonder if it would be possible to hold such a conversation now, much less publish such an opinion, without being fitted with a straight-jacket!

You really couldn't make it up!