arteight

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Love @arteight's art but don't get what the sentence means. *Bored? By smoking?*

Remember, that in the early 20th century smoking was normal for a huge part of the population. Doctors were shown in tobacco ads praising different brands. Cubeb (non-tobacco) cigarettes were prescribed to asthmatics. Cigarettes were added to military rations during WWII.

Smoking was firmly entrenched. It was a way of life. A rite of passage for kids. We kids ate *candy cigarettes* and pretended to smoke *chewing gum cigars*. Proud fathers handed out real cigars when their wives bore children. Fancy cigarettes were smoked by Hollywood stars. People wanted to emulate them.

I remember when the first TV commercials against tobacco aired in the late 1960s. My dad stopped smoking, but my aunt and uncles kept at it. Caused a ton of family controversy for a long time, and deaths as well.

Most homes in old Brooklyn were heated by coal as well, so tobacco was just another substance that had to be cleaned from walls, windows, mirrors, etc. People were so used to it that the product now known as Play-Doh was first developed to get tobacco and coal residue off wallpaper. It was a fact of life for most of the population in the United States.

Very few really knew that the stuff begriming their homes and places of business was also begriming their lungs.

So, while there were always some who hated smoking, I doubt that Steve gave it any thought. The anti-smoking campaign was decades away, and took more decades to be effective.

But I really like the art!

Happy Хеловин

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