Why do they smoke inside a gas station?

We live in a hyper legalistic time where everyone is concerned with indemnity.
We used to avoid accidents, figure they likely won't happen, and accept the consequences if we were at fault (and thereby not put ourselves at risk). Smoking around a gas station wasn't that big a deal. What's likely to happen?
But worst case scenario takes hold, and we all have to worry about some blameless victim being caught up in some on else's lack of complete foresight and caution.
Where I live, some idiot ran over his own kid driving backwards on his lawnmower, then sued the company for creating an unsafe product. Shame !!

At that time, and well into the 1970s, people smoked anywhere they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. Movie theater balconies, restaurants, public libraries, doctors' offices, grocery stores, school campuses, hospitals, and gas stations. In 1972 I worked in a supermarket and one of my tasks was to go up and down the aisles every half hour with a three-foot-wide dry mop to sweep up all the cigarette butts. Different world.