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Comment by belltaco | Hacker News Reader

Smoking wasn't banned on planes till 1985. You had smoking and non-smoking sections, but they were only separated by a curtain, same with restaurants.

Edit, it was even worse:

> In 1988, airlines based in the United States banned smoking on domestic flights of less than two hours, which was extended to domestic flights of less than six hours in February 1990, and to all domestic and international flights in 2000

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> Smoking wasn't banned on planes till 1985. You had smoking and non-smoking sections, but they were only separated by a curtain, same with restaurants.

Can confirm, I still remember playing with the in-seat ashtrays and my mother telling me to stop, and then the whole rigamarole with the "smoking" and "non-smoking" sections and lights.

Hell I remember my father buying Marlboro reds from an old vending machine that was entirely mechanical.

There are still a few of these cigarette vending machines around in bars and they were always fun to use back when I was a smoker 5-10 years ago. The ones I got to use had a pull style activation that was quite satisfying as it required a decent yank to dispense the pack.

That's exactly it, the wooden-knobbed pull cabinets. I remember begging my father to let me work the mechanism, but he had to help me.

Yeah, I’ve only used them a few times, perhaps less than 20 in my life, but I distinctly remember that using them took more strength than I expected, hah.

Curtain? There was no curtain. I got stuck in the smoking section once flying home from college in the late 80s and started to get sick. Fortunately the flight attendants were able to find someone in non-smoking willing to switch seats with me.

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