It was glamorised by Hollywood for years. It was the hip thing for the younger set to do. Restaurants and bars were like opium dens, a clear view from one side to the other was a rare thing.
One of my first after school jobs was working out the front of a barber shop which of course was a tobacco outlet. It wasn't unusual for the barber to have a fag hanging out his mouth as he practised his tonsorial artistry, which is actually a bit of an overstatement considering the universally common cut in those days was a short back and sides.
Cigarette smoking was a way of life but unknown to the great, smelly unwashed at the time it was laying the foundations to a lingering, painful death.
It's hardly surprising that people puffed away, oblivious to the damage they were causing themselves. They were products of the Second World War where smoking, and trading in them, was seen as patriotic. Through the ages doctors failed to appreciate the damage it was doing to health, even recommending it as an aid for calming nerves.
Toward the end of the war the Health Department issued its first warning against smoking but it had little impact. By 1960 New Zealand had the sixth highest smoking rate in the OECD, after the likes of the United States and Australia.
