Cigarette smoking attitudes represent a cultural upheaval

It was not so long ago that smoking was glamorous. Tobacco companies paid millions of dollars for "product placements" to have the most popular movie stars suck on their brands, although they shifted from Lucky Strikes to Marlboros in recent years. In my younger days, newspaper and magazine advertisements and television commercials had medical doctors saying Camels (my brand, unfiltered, at the time) are good for you. In the 1950s, some participants in the Tour de France, which is full swing right now, were urged to smoke as a way of improving their performance.

You don't see medical doctors or professional bicycle racers pitching cigarettes these days, and paid cigarette placements in movies have subsided, although a few paid placements for Marlboros, along with the sneaky paid plugs forCoca-Cola, McDonalds, etc., still contaminate some movies and television programs. Meanwhile, the innocent victims of cigarette smoke, who used to just suffer in silence as carcinogens and other gunk coated the interiors of their lungs along with the lungs of nearby cigarette addicts, are not as tolerant as they used to be. In past years, if I wrote anything negative about smoking, I'd get blizzards of complaints saying I was against the "freedom" of nicotine junkies. Indeed, I do oppose any restriction on behaviors that do not harm the unwilling — be they smoking or other vices and habits.

If you want to rot your brain with drugs or take other risks, I shall make no objection whatsoever. Smoking, however, often affects others in various ways and, when it comes to the acceptance of smoking, it is amazing how the tide has turned. The reaction to Sunday's column about smoking by parasites on public assistance was pretty much 100 percent in favor of my opposition to such coddling. Even more gratifying was the news a few days later that the state is going to try a trial smoking ban in some state parks because of the cigarette filter litter problem, an issue I raised less than seven weeks ago. "It enrages me to constantly see our government rewarding these people for mistakes," wrote Brad Sauerzopf.

That was in reference to last week's story in The Morning Call about a ban on smoking by the Allentown Housing Authority, which regulates public housing in the city, and my column on Sunday, which raised questions about taxpayers being forced to subsidize people who can afford smoking and other pernicious luxuries. "I wonder how much we could save as a country if all the help we gave was closely monitored and how much was spent on cigarettes, booze and tattoos," Sauerzopf said. (Last week's stories in the paper and online were accompanied by photographs of tattooed young men protesting the ban.) "I was trying to understand how a guy adorned with hundreds of [dollars] worth of tattoos and smoking $6-a-pack butts felt he had the right to complain about no-smoking regulations in the housing that I (and you) pay for," said Carl Poehler.