When having a smoking area near my desk seemed normal

 

The good news: Only 14 percent of American adults are smokers, down from 43 percent in 1972.

The bad news: The number of smokers increased during the pandemic, even though COVID-19 harms your lungs. Boredom and stress, I guess.

More bad news: The first few years I worked at the Daily Republic, the sports department was the newspaper building's designated smoking area, so I inhaled enough burning tobacco during that time to qualify as a smoker.

Yes, my workspace was the smoking area.

Yes, it seemed like progress. Yes, the entire sports staff at the DR was subjected to hours of carcinogens every day, since any smoker in the entire building – any reporter or editor, any advertising sales representative, any front office employee, anyone who smoked – stood and puffed next to our desks.

The weird thing? It didn't seem weird. It seemed kind of normal.

Granted, this was in the mid-1980s, so everyone on the sports staff (there were five of us in those glory days) likely grew up around smokers. My dad smoked cigarettes, cigars and pipes for years – until he got cancer and quit cold turkey. (Decades later, the smell of cigars still makes me nauseous because I associate it with him smoking cigars on trips while I got carsick. I regale friends with an impersonation of my dad yelling over his shoulder for us to roll up our windows because "that just sucks more smoke back there, dammit!").

Smoking areas were a reasonably new thing when I started at the Daily Republic, baby steps to treat nonsmokers as having rights to avoid cancer-causing chemicals. Restaurants had non-smoking areas (usually a couple of tables surrounded by people who smoked like Don Draper). People occasionally asked if it was OK if they smoked in your house. Heck, it's possible that by the time I was inhaling co-workers' smoke, the cigarette machine at the pizza parlor where I worked in college was being loosely watched to ensure that a 10-year-old didn't buy a pack of Camels.

Maybe.

My first few years at the Daily Republic – until the building was remodeled and had a second story added – were spent with people hanging out and smoking while I worked. For them, it was a nice break and a chance to visit. In the pre-Internet era, they could talk sports with us and ask what happened during the day. The business writer nervously smoked while talking about what he had to finish that day. Several ad representatives talked about the 49ers or Giants or A's with us. Others merely stood there, not acknowledging anyone as they blew their toxic smoke into the room.

And it seemed normal.

In 2020, as we wear masks to avoid being exposed to a dangerous virus – and as smokers are required to huddle a long distance from the rest of us – it seems insane that in the not-too-distant past, it was considered progress to merely expose sportswriters to cigarette smoke. All day. All night.

As the advertisements for Virginia Slims (women's cigarettes!) used to say, "You've come a long way, baby!"

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.