Hey everyone, Jody here. For those of you who celebrate Christmas or celebrate Hanukkah or celebrate Kwanza, I hope you're having a happy holiday.

For those of you who celebrate none of it and just like to listen to podcasts and go about your business, I hope you're having a great day as well.

We're giving ourselves a little time off during these holiday seasons and bringing you some episodes from the archives.

Now, you may have heard on our previous episode

about drunk driving and how this country really brought drunk driving numbers down. I mentioned

an episode we'd done about smoking, which is a similar story, a mix of politics and policy

and norms. And so we thought we'd bring you an episode from a couple years ago now about

the way that smoking laws and smoking norms changed in this

country. Really fascinating episode with a really fascinating guest. So here it is. Take a listen,

and we will see you soon. Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from

Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, February 6, 1987, new rules are in effect that impact almost a million employees

in almost 7,000 buildings used by the General Services Administration. That is to say,

federally owned and operated buildings, and these new rules

state that federal employees can no longer smoke cigarettes freely, but now only in designated areas.

This could be all sorts of spaces. We'll get into it, but you know, this couch is for smoking,

this smoking room. Maybe you're picturing those little painted boxes out on the sidewalk

designated for smoking. This is basically the

moment where we start to get those for federal workers. And of course, this is a moment that is part

of a larger story and larger trend to curb smoking in all sorts of ways, sort of peaking in the late

1980s and 90s. So let's talk about this moment, that larger context. And look, we're talking

about a controversial federal mandate intended to improve the health of federal workers and those

...