If you’re considering how much society has changed in the past few years, one of the things to talk about is smoke free bars.

I remember when smoke in bars used to hover around the ceiling in a dense haze. I remember when many people didn’t want to wear their nicest clothes into bars because of the smoke.

Smoke free bars were just starting to be talked about in the 1990s when I worked as a full-time reporter. They were a controversial idea back then. If for some odd reason I’d wanted to make almost everybody mad, writing a column advocating smoke free bars would have been a way to do it.

Very few people would have liked it. The bar owners and bar patrons would have resented it because many bar customers are smokers. Some anti-alcohol groups would have seen it as a promotion of alcohol consumption.

So I never wrote about it in the 1990s. I can write about smoke free bars now because they’ve turned into a fact of life.

It reflects a total change in public sentiments. In the old days bars were always a place where someone could drink and smoke. People were accustomed to thinking smokers had a right to smoke indoors.

Now it’s different. The right to smoke is less significant than the rights of non-smokers not to be exposed to it.

There have been many very good public information efforts and many excellent tobacco cessation programs for those who want to quit. Sources such as the Surgeon General and the American Lung Association have led the charge.

Smoking is no longer fashionable. We don’t see cigarettes in advertisements for something else. There’s no Marlboro Man anymore.

The only places in bars and restaurants that are smoky are the patios. It eventually wasn’t enough to have smoking and non-smoking sections. The smoke was still very pervasive.

We have a much broader knowledge base in 2025 about the health risks of smoking, the dangers of second hand smoke, and the need for indoor air quality. People have come to expect a healthy environment.

No reasonable person would suggest anymore that cigarettes are healthy. I’ve heard at least a dozen elderly smokers say they never would have started if they knew what they know now about the health risks. Most of them had formed a habit that had existed for many years and were past the point of being able to quit.

It took a long time for attitudes toward smoking to change, but I think most people saw it coming. It became perfectly respectable to prevent house guests from smoking indoors.

Many people in 2025 don’t even have ash trays. If they have them, they’re probably tobacco collectibles rather than ones that are actually used to smoke.

These changes are basically a good thing. They’d be good if they prevented even one case of lung closer. They’ve undoubtedly prevented many thousands of cases.

Smoking is still an individual choice. If someone hangs out with smokers, there can still be peer pressure to take part in smoking activities.

I’ve personally never been tempted to smoke anything. It just didn’t make sense to put smoke into my lungs. The healthiest choice was never to smoke.

In the old days in a bar environment it could seem as though everyone smoked. Now we know that everyone doesn’t do it.

People should think very carefully before starting to smoke. It’s addictive. It’s expensive. It doesn’t make much sense. The long-term changes with bars and restaurants are a giant step in the right direction.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent