Mad Men is an interesting show. Leaving aside what I feel about the show itself and individual characters and story arcs, one thing that is fascinating:
Seeing people smoke inside. Everyone does it and they do it most of the time. I, of course, was not alive in the 1960s. But it astounds me to see it depicted as such. I know that people smoked more in the 1960s.
But how could people stand being cooped up with all of that smoke? I like smoking cigars, but I could not be in a closed space with them. Just couldn’t do it. I’d feel like I was choking.
At some point in our history we didn’t have tobacco. So presumably at some point we went from not smoking, to smoking, to smoking indoors (I can only assume there was some hesitation surrounding setting a small, mobile fire indoors for entertainment’s sake). Perhaps people got used to it, growing up with it, and I’m just not… but shouldn’t the sheer incidence of lung cancer have been crazy high? Or did people just die of other stuff first?
Also — what did the cigarette companies do with all that money???