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There are "smoke-easies" that have sprung up in major American cities. Places where one must gain admittance at the door, and inside, the prohibition on smoking is disregarded.
At a family gathering the other day, we were discussing the expanding bans on smoking worldwide (all were non-smokers, all 40+). The politics of the whole business aside, it is unrealistic to expect an immediate adjustment to such an enormous (and rather unexpected) sea change. The generations of us who remember an ashtray on every restaurant table, standing ashtrays in department stores, and smoking stands (with cigarettes for guests - just like the liquor cabinet), were all common, will have to pass on before the total ban is really in full acceptance. I think the one thing we all found surprising was that the tobacco lobby wasn't strong enough to fight it all off.
So when a gentleman, like JohnTheGreek, has a cigar on the unoccupied patio, as he has probably done all his adult life, and some kid starts screeching about it like a little girl with a spider in her hair... well, his dismay is understandable.
At a family gathering the other day, we were discussing the expanding bans on smoking worldwide (all were non-smokers, all 40+). The politics of the whole business aside, it is unrealistic to expect an immediate adjustment to such an enormous (and rather unexpected) sea change. The generations of us who remember an ashtray on every restaurant table, standing ashtrays in department stores, and smoking stands (with cigarettes for guests - just like the liquor cabinet), were all common, will have to pass on before the total ban is really in full acceptance. I think the one thing we all found surprising was that the tobacco lobby wasn't strong enough to fight it all off.
So when a gentleman, like JohnTheGreek, has a cigar on the unoccupied patio, as he has probably done all his adult life, and some kid starts screeching about it like a little girl with a spider in her hair... well, his dismay is understandable.