I mentioned smoking in the workplace in my earlier post and how that evolved over time - When my company moved in 1991, our new office building (WTC Tower 7) had no smoking. That was a godsend for me because I had some smokers in the old building after I switched divisions in 1989. The department head, a smoker himself, gave me his table fan for me to put on the top of my cabinets to keep the smoke away after I got switched to another desk a few months before we moved to the smoke-free building.
Another huge bit of happiness was when the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) banned smoking on its trains in 1988. Before that, the LIRR had smoking cars in one or two of its cars depending on total train length. While there signs printed on the outside of the smoking cars, the presence of these gas chambers sometimes forced me to stand inside a crowded N/S car instead of sitting in a gas chamber. Another downside of the smoking cars was that I sometimes had to walk through them to get to my desired N/S car when some of the cars did not reach a short platform. I would take a deep breath before entering the car and try to walk quickly through the car before I got to the other end. Sometimes I made it, sometimes I didn't (if I was walking behind a slow-ass passenger). When I didn't, that first breath while still inside the smoking car was really awful.
I was able to avoid the smoking areas on airplanes when I flew in the 1970s and 1980s before smoking got banned on most domestic US commercial flights in 1990. But one time, I accepted $20 ("the easiest $20 I'd ever make," he told me) to switch seats with a businessman who wanted to switch seats with me so he could be with his business partner. There were 2 problems with that - my new seat was the last row of the NS rows so I had smoke drifting from the smoking rows to mine. The second was that my new seatmate was a horrible obese man whose large midsection hung over the armrest and kept me from sitting comfortably for the long flight. I later went to my old seat and told both men, "This is NOT the easiest $20 I'd ever make!"
At my original work place on my 23rd birthday in 1986, a smoker tried to sneak a lit cigarette onto an elevator with me and about 10 other people, none of which I knew. I refused to allow the elevator door close until the offender either put the cigarette out or left the elevator. Nobody came to my aid, including some old man who kinda watched over things in the lobby after I yelled out, "Security!" The other riders were yelling at ME, not the smoker, for delaying the elevator's departure. Then everyone else left the elevator, including one passenger who told the smoker, "Stay on the elevator with him (me)!" Both men left the elevator and I had a quiet, peaceful, and smoke-free ride to my floor. Nice way to start my 23rd birthday, huh? I wish I had thought of notifying my office's HR so they could report the behavior of the lobby man (who was a smoker himself) and get him into some trouble he so richly deserved.
In college in the early 1980s, I had to pester my dorm's management to get them to post "No Smoking" signs in the elevators, as many dorm residents often sneaked lit cigarettes into elevators. I also got the dorm management to create a separate non-smoking area in the cafeteria's seating area. It wasn't full enclosed or separately ventilated but it was the best they could do.
On Long Island, its two counties (Nassau, where I lived when not in college in Manhattan, and Suffolk) had different non-smoking laws, with Suffolk being a bit stronger at the time. Having lived near the border between the counties, we often went out to eat in Suffolk to avoid encountering smokers sitting near us.
In the 1990s, when both counties and New York State were considering and passing stronger anti-smoking laws, I frequently wrote my elected leaders in Nassau and NYS to urge them to pass strong, loophole-free laws to stamp out smoking in places such as restaurants, movie theaters (another lousy place for smoke-free air), workplaces, and pool halls. These laws got passed so my fellow non-smokers and I can now eat out, go to movies, and shoot pool without any fear of having our lungs subjected to the awful air of smokers.