Why Cigarettes Were So Popular

From John ''Everyone Under The Age Of 50 Is Scum'' Derbyshire:

Looking back on the Cigarette Age—the middle two quarters of the twentieth century—from this point in time, a lot of young people must wonder: Why did everyone smoke so much? Well, here's a part of the answer.

Pubs are planning to pump air fresheners into their bars to mask the smell of stale beer, sweat and drains that used to be disguised by cigarettes before the smoking ban. ... Oliver Devine, senior marketing manager at the Sizzling Pub Company, part of M&B [a big British brewery company], told the [London] Sunday Times: "Appetising food smells have increased but others are less attractive, such as stale food and beer, damp, sweat and body odour, drains and—how do you put this nicely?—flatulence."

M&B has already tried out fragrances at four pubs in Edinburgh and Glasgow. "We are considering trialling [sic] the smell of leather, which suggests luxury and indulgence, and cut grass, which is clean and domestic," he added.

Before the advent of modern standards of hygiene and ventilation, there were even more nasty smells around than there are today. Tobacco smoke helped block out those smells, and was welcomed on that account, even by nonsmokers. To this day, the Chinese word for "cigarette" is xiangyan—"fragrant smoke."

In novels of the cigarette age—I am reading one at the moment—a smoking character will ask a nonsmoker if it's OK to light up, and the nonsmoker will say: "Go ahead—I don't myself, but I like the smell of the smoke." As opposed to the smell of you, is the unspoken following thought.