Remember the days when everyone smoked?

Cigarette smoke wafted up from restaurant tables. Young men rolled packs of Marlboros in their shirt sleeves. Ingrid Bergman lit up in "Casablanca."

Not anymore, smokers and non-smokers say. In California, laws curtail cigarette advertisements and outlaw smoking in restaurants and bars. In Stanislaus County, the fair board this year designated smoke-free areas at the county fair.

City officials in Modesto last week banned smoking in children's areas of city parks. And later this year, Modesto Junior College is expected to decide whether to curtail smoking near building entrances.

"It seems like smoking is a lot less acceptable now than it was," said Ed Crosby, owner of Crosby Tobacconist and Flyfishing Outfitters in Modesto.

If you're over 30, you probably remember the days when actors smoked on television, not just in TV movies but in commercials. Such advertisements aren't aired today.

Marge Andreasen, a 72-year-old former smoker, recalls a particular Virginia Slims ad in which a woman tried to peddle the brand of cigarette to other women -- other "liberated" women.

"It was 'our own cigarette' or something like that," she said. "I don't think that would go over today."

That's just what tobacco education coordinators want to hear. They work for counties, medical foundations and schools, trying to convince young people that smoking is anything but cool.

Mark Loeser, a project coordinator with the Fresh Outdoors Project, is a tobacco educator who brings that message to children. His group helped convince the fair board to outlaw tobacco use at its children's carnival and livestock areas as well as in some areas of the grandstand and the arena.

He also approached Modesto City Council about banning tobacco in its children's playgrounds, tot lots and wading pools.

Next, the Fresh Outdoors Project went to Modesto Junior College with the proposal to ban smoking within 20 feet of building entrances.

The idea, Loeser said, is to cut down on second-hand smoke and keep children from seeing adults light up.

"If kids aren't exposed to it, that decreases the likelihood they'll smoke," he said.

Other organizations are also reaching out to young people.

World Tobacco Day

Today, on World Tobacco Day, tobacco educators from the Stanislaus County Health Services Agency will hang out outside movie theaters in Turlock, Modesto and Riverbank, passing out a "smoke analyzer form" designed to help young people recognize whether a movie glamorizes smoking.

Movie-goers are asked to select their favorite character. If that character smoked or chewed tobacco, they decide how the tobacco use made the character appear -- glamorous, happy, powerful, nervous, etc.

"In California, fewer and fewer people are smoking, yet the movies continue to show people smoking all the time," said Heather Gruenig Duvall, tobacco education program coordinator for the Health Services Agency. "It's not the reality of what's going on."

Duvall cites a state Department of Health Services study that shows 82 percent of California residents don't smoke. Yet, she said, smoking continues to be shown in movies like "Reality Bites" and "My Best Friend's Wedding."

Tobacco shop owner Crosby isn't sure fewer people smoke these days. He doesn't believe smokers have kicked the habit, just that smokers are less visible. They can't light up in restaurants or bars.

"There are so many places where people can't smoke," he said.

Still, he agrees with tobacco educators that smoking isn't as popular as it used to be. That might be because of the new laws. Or because tobacco companies were forced by law and lawsuits to remove freeway billboards and television spots advertising their products.

Or because efforts to educate young people about the health risks associated with smoking have worked.

"Tobacco isn't healthy," Duvall said. "I think young people are catching on to that."

Reprinted by permission of Modesto Bee.