Blast from the past: When people smoked everywhere - from aeroplanes to offices

​Earlier this week MPs voted to back the government's plans to create a "smoke-free generation", and reduce the number of smoking-related deaths. Effectively, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants to ban smoking in the UK.
Princess Margaret laughing delightedly and holding a cigarette, seated beside the Marchioness of Salisbury as they took tea in the Comet during the flight.Princess Margaret laughing delightedly and holding a cigarette, seated beside the Marchioness of Salisbury as they took tea in the Comet during the flight.
Princess Margaret laughing delightedly and holding a cigarette, seated beside the Marchioness of Salisbury as they took tea in the Comet during the flight.
By Helen McGurk
Published 19th Apr 2024, 17:21 BST
Updated 19th Apr 2024, 17:25 BST

Doubtless, If she were alive, my old primary school teacher would have plenty to say about this, for as we chimed off times tables, she chained smoked Embassy Regals all day, every day, in a small, poorly ventilated classroom whilst her charges coughed into their scratchy 1970s woolly jumpers, barely able to see their jotters through the fug of smoke

It’s a stretch now to imagine a time when putting a burning tube of chemically-infused leaves in your mouth used to be healthy, relaxing and sexy…..(pipe smokers, particularly female ones, were never considered glamourous, just a bit, well, strange).

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There was a time when cigarette packets weren’t plastered with tracheotomies and gangrenous toes, and smoking was something you did everywhere from planes, trains and automobiles to offices, homes, hospitals, restaurants, pubs and TV shows. Politicians smoked. Sportsmen smoked. Mothers smoked and so did fathers.

The habit is now largely a private one and if the government gets its way, those few ‘diehards’ will eventually be smoked out!

Related topics:MPsRishi SunakPoliticians

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