No spitting, no smoking

doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7406.0-g

BMJ 2003;327 (12 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7406.0-g

Editor's choice

No spitting, no smoking

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

One of the joys of being old is that you can spot long termsocial trends. When I was a boy the world was full of signssaying: "No spitting." People do still spit in the street,but it's now highly deviant. The signs have disappeared. Smokingis slowly following spitting into profound deviancy, and LiamDonaldson, England's chief medical officer, last week hastenedthe trend by calling for a ban on smoking in public places and at work (p 69). This has, of course, already happened in manyplaces, including Los Angeles, New York, and the Republic ofIreland.

In the 1950s my doctor would smoke while examining me. WhenI was a medical student in Edinburgh in 1970 you could smokein the medical reading room but not in the university library.Headbanging (a colloquial term for "crazy, foolish, fanatical")sociologists would thus make for the . . . [Full text of this article]

Richard Smith, editor

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