McDonalds used to have ashtrays in the dining area!
Airplanes have ashtrays in the armrests to this day!
The Disappearance of the Ashtray
51–60 of 668 posts
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#52It's tough to portray just how ubiquitous smoking was to a modern audience. You would go to a restaurant and the first thing your hostess would ask is "smoking or non"? I remember standing in a checkout line in the 80s as a child and being fascinated with the billowing clouds of smoke an old lady blew. I remember coming home from bars reeking of smoke, even though I didn't. Even teachers had their own lounges that re…
Do you remember professors smoking in class or office hours? The student smoking area in high school?
At one time, a pipe was nearly as stereotypical of professors as a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows.
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#53Movie theaters has them on the back of seats. Ashtrays we're in the stalls in restrooms. Thank goodness they're gone. Stinky and unsanitary.
Stinky, sure but unsanitary? Its ash. And no self respecting smoker will get the butt wet with saliva, its bad form.
Its more sanitary than chewing gum! (And civilized, but chewing gum is a low bar)
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time to read up on how NZ implemented it. Already smoke, even if incidentally? You're 100% unaffected, you can still buy them until you die from old age. Too young? Cool, you're never going to get ciggies sold to you, and you're not going to miss suddenly no longer have access to them because you never did anyway. No one loses. It's a very long term solution, and one that (the current forms of) the US or Europe could…
There are a lot of people who insist that prohibition never works. I wonder if this is successful it will change their minds.
Nicotine is still available to the younger generation in the form of vapes. It isn't a strict prohibition, it's an effort at harm reduction by turning people away from the worst method of ingestion. And, yeah, time will tell.
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#55I found an old Disneyland ashtray at a garage sale once. I think this is amusing https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=vintage+Disneyland+asht...
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#56I inherited from my dad an ashtray made from the end if a three inch artillery shell. As an ensign in the US Navy in 1960, he had a machinists mate make one for him by cutting the end of the shell down and then welding bent pennies onto it for the cigarette holder portion.
My favorite detail was that it was stamped 1944 on the bottom.
“But dad, you were in the Navy in the 1960’s?”
“They made a LOT of shells in 1944”
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#57It's tough to portray just how ubiquitous smoking was to a modern audience. You would go to a restaurant and the first thing your hostess would ask is "smoking or non"? I remember standing in a checkout line in the 80s as a child and being fascinated with the billowing clouds of smoke an old lady blew. I remember coming home from bars reeking of smoke, even though I didn't. Even teachers had their own lounges that re…
Do you remember professors smoking in class or office hours? The student smoking area in high school?
There is a youtube video of renowned physicist Sidney Coleman (RIP giving a classroom lecture about general relativity or something. I was watching it, listening along, and at one point in the lecture he stopped to light a smoke, then kepc lecturing with the cig in his hand. I almost busted up laughing.
Oppenheimer also would lecture while holding a cigaratte, according to biographies of him that I've read, but he was before my time and I've never seen any videos of him.
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, being constantly ostracised from public spaces isn’t great either… something I find infuriating when I travel abroad. If there were at least a few smoking bars where you don’t have to go out into the cold to smoke I think that would be nice.
[flagged]
Can we chill on the hate? Be impassioned, sure. But this 'people like you deserve' is not welcome. You arent going to convince a smoker tgeyre wrong by being a shining example of the prototypical asshole non smoker
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#59It's tough to portray just how ubiquitous smoking was to a modern audience. You would go to a restaurant and the first thing your hostess would ask is "smoking or non"? I remember standing in a checkout line in the 80s as a child and being fascinated with the billowing clouds of smoke an old lady blew. I remember coming home from bars reeking of smoke, even though I didn't. Even teachers had their own lounges that re…
Do you remember professors smoking in class or office hours? The student smoking area in high school?
I do remember going to Palo Alto Medical Foundation in the mid 1970s, and waiting in the exam room until the doctor walked in, puffing on a cigarette.
More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette
https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTU4NDI2ODU5NTc3NTUwM...
Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of people who insist that prohibition never works. I wonder if this is successful it will change their minds.
I think there’s some nuance here. You can’t totally prohibit something people really want to do, but you can pretty effectively prohibit something almost no one wants to do or where there is a very good substitute. Having a tiny landmass, and no land borders also helps. It’s possible to grown tobacco hydroponically but I’m not sure if anyone would bother unless there was an overnight hard ban.
That's a reasonable line of thought, but NZ already has a fairly robust black market for tobacco products: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/12/17/new-zealands-pl...
> a tenth of the tobacco consumed in 2019 in New Zealand was illicit.
which is broadly similar to the US market, if admittedly on the low end: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/19016/understandin...
> the portion of the total U.S. tobacco market represented by illicit sales has grown in recent years and is now between 8.5 percent and 21 percent
I think a lot of people underestimate how difficult combating smuggling is, even with a tiny landmass and no land borders. Nobody's checking every container, much less package.