being from about the same age group as Sinner, from our experiences as young boys and then as teenagers in the 1980s it was then seen as the “manly” thing to smoke. My Dad was Chinese too and they are notorious smokers (a common joke in Malaysia is that Chinese babies are born with a cigarette in their mouths).
I smoked from age 15 until age 37 and then decided I couldn’t be bothered with it any more due to the exorbitant cost of cigarettes in the UK, the fact my Dad had died in 2000 from serious ill health (though smoking wasn’t the main cause it didn’t help matters) and not going partying as much (TBH by the time I was in my mid 30s I had gone from regular to just social smoking).
I may have smoked a cigarette once in 2010, I can’t remember, but nowadays I can’t be arsed with buying them.
Also a lot of my current friends do not smoke at all or no longer do so, probably because a large proportion of them are eco-friendly hippy types and there are some most unpleasant issues with how tobacco farmers in some nations are treated.
That said I don’t like the argument that some supposed “pro-drugs” activists have that “alcohol and tobacco are legal but as dangerous as illegal drugs” – as although its true it also hands a platform to governments of all politicial persuasions to increase taxes on these legal substances and restrict their use – and nightlife as a whole something which is already happening.
if you are British and below the age of 30 you might take for granted the fact that its not seen as odd for young people to be on the streets way after midnight due to the amount of “townie” venues and late opening bars (even if you do not use them yourself) and they don’t get stopped and searched half as much as they once did. This is all a relatively new development though, happened in my lifetime and is slowly being rolled back.
