"No Smoking" signs in Trek Films - fun to discuss!

[Kirk1980]

Because some enjoy smoking, while not being addicted. And there hasn't been a social situation where smoking has been "cool" for a few years now, in fact it is really quite the opposite now.

Ummmm...it still does get started up as a thing the 'cool kids' do in most high schools. 'Cool' or 'rebel' now that it's not considered the polite thing to do.

How long has it been since you were in school?

Considering I'm a teacher.... fairly recently.

It may not be as out in the open and there may be some more negativity around it but it is still what the 'rebels' and the 'cool kids' do.

Choose to disbelieve me if you like, but my information comes from several different areas (rich kids, poor kids, city kids, town kids, farm kids, etc). Admittedly, it's just in CT and Southwestern MA, but I doubt it's hardly isolated to this region.

If it is, do feel free to educate me.

 

[Data Holmes]

Ummmm...it still does get started up as a thing the 'cool kids' do in most high schools. 'Cool' or 'rebel' now that it's not considered the polite thing to do.

How long has it been since you were in school?

Considering I'm a teacher.... fairly recently.

It may not be as out in the open and there may be some more negativity around it but it is still what the 'rebels' and the 'cool kids' do.

Choose to disbelieve me if you like, but my information comes from several different areas (rich kids, poor kids, city kids, town kids, farm kids, etc). Admittedly, it's just in CT and Southwestern MA, but I doubt it's hardly isolated to this region.

If it is, do feel free to educate me.

In NJ schools it's pretty much looked down upon, mostly because it stinks. I know many cigarette smokers who don't even smoke in their own homes anymore because they don't like it that people comment on "the smell". Many kids still do smoke them, but it doesn't carry a "socially cool" element anymore.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Well, on Voyager, they dealt with the topic of smoking and Tom Paris said people stopped smoking because they realized it was killing them.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

They still drink coffee and alcohol, so they also smoke. Even more so when you think that medical advancements will make every sort of cancer treatable.

Caffeine and alcohol don't kill people as much as smoking does, even with the supposed cancer cure.

 

[Anticitizen]

On the baldness issue: many people with perfectly good heads of hair choose to shave their heads. Baldness isn't a 'disease' that needs to be 'cured'. Sure, in the 24th century, if a bald man wants hair, he could take Dr. Pulaski's Wonder Pill and have a full mane in the morning, but maybe he likes being bald.

On smoking... I seem to remember a TNG poker game scene in which the men at the table smoked cigars. It may have been the episode in which those same men grew beards. Am I misremembering?

 

[Start Wreck]

Why? I mean, if you've removed all of the negative health effects with medical science, where is the incentive to not do something?

Because it smells really gross?

Says you. I would disagree that my pipe or cigars smell gross, and there are many other tobaccos which do not.

But that's why it wouldn't be socially acceptable, because some people think it's gross. Smoking is only a personal activity when you're not in the presence of others.

 

[CoveTom]

But that's why it wouldn't be socially acceptable, because some people think it's gross. Smoking is only a personal activity when you're not in the presence of others.

That's an interesting definition of "socially acceptable." Something cannot be socially acceptable if even some people think it's gross? I'm sure back in the 40's there were some people who though cigarette smoke was gross. But it was certainly socially acceptable to smoke. There are people today who think eating meat is gross. But it is certainly socially acceptable to eat meat.

 

[Start Wreck]

I'm pretty sure eating meat doesn't directly affect anyone but the person eating it (and the creature it came from), so other people finding it gross is fairly irrelevant. Now if you could find a way to confine smoke solely to the area of the smoker's head, it might be a fair comparison.

Fair point about smoking being socially acceptable once. But we were a backwards society once!

 

[CoveTom]

^ We weren't talking about the health effects of smoking, though, just its social acceptability. My point was that you could find "some" people who find just about anything to be gross. That's not really the standard for social acceptability. It's really more about what the majority feel about it.

 

[Start Wreck]

^I wasn't talking about its health effects either. I was referring to the fact that smoke's 'grossness' effect is a tangible one, not simply one of disagreement. Smoke physically interacts with others, not just the smoker. The meat-eating equivalent would be wiping meat juice over somebody else's face. Which, although hilarious, is not socially acceptable!

 

[T'Girl]

But that's why it wouldn't be socially acceptable, because some people think it's gross. Smoking is only a personal activity when you're not in the presence of others.

I'm sure back in the 40's there were some people who though cigarette smoke was gross. But it was certainly socially acceptable to smoke.

Back in the forties (other times too) the tobacco companies advertised heavily, they would pay the Hollywood studios to show the big stars of the day smoking during films, that's partially how the stigma of women smoking was overcame. In the centuries to come, smoking will come and go from fashion. Also most of the people we see are in starfleet, even today smoking is discouraged in the service.

 

[Elder Knight]

Sure, cancer: easily curable. Baldness: they're stumped!

They have a cure, picard chose to "go natural".

Or as they put it in their time, "to baldly go . . . !"