Seventy-two nonsmoker and four smoker college faculty/staff members and 160 nonsmoker and 52 smoker college students from a small liberal arts college in a suburban area in the Northeast United States completed a 15-item survey concerning views of smoking. Participants were asked to rate "when you watch someone else smoke, how do they appear?" on the following dimensions: inadequate, relaxed, anxious, physically fit, alert, energized, jittery, confident, inconsiderate, attractive, sophisticated, secure, immature, content, and intelligent. Significant generation main effects were found on 10 of the 15 characteristic dimensions. On all of these variables, faculty/staff perceptions were more critical than student perceptions. Significant smoking history main effects were found on several variables. Ratings of perceived alertness, confidence, and physical fitness revealed former smokers to be more critical of smokers than those who had never smoked. In contrast, former smokers were less critical when evaluating the dimensions of anxiety, adequacy, jitteriness, and consideration of smokers. Significant generation by smoking status interactions were observed on three variables. On ratings of smokers' alertness and physical fitness, the faculty who had never smoked were more critical than their former smoking peers, whereas the most critical of all groups were those students who had quit smoking. This pattern was reversed for perceptions of smokers' maturity, for which former smoker faculty and those students who had never smoked were more critical than their respective peers. (Contains 4 tables and 19 references.) (MKA)