Smoking is making a pop culture comeback (even if the risks haven’t changed)

Culture has always been cyclical. If you’re middle-aged or older, you’ve likely observed the styles and media of your youth returning — often for the third or fourth time. A pop star in flared jeans, a party in your neighbourhood blasting Y2K rave tracks or an overheard slice of ’90s slang at your coffee shop are all reminders that the ways we interact, and the symbols we use to define ourselves, are so often repurposed nuggets of yesteryear.

So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that, despite decades of anti-smoking campaigns, legislation focused on the habit’s serious health risks and a long-term decline in smoking rates, cigarettes have become noticeably less taboo once again. 

You don’t have to live in a downtown hotspot to notice it either. There are the A-listers long associated with smoking — from Ben Affleck to Sean Penn — and now a new crop of stars celebrating cigarettes, from Dua Lipa to Charli XCX. The glamourized smoking scenes in Celine Song’s Materialists are part of the film’s visual signature. Real Housewives all-star Countess Luann de Lesseps, who now appears on CBC’s Murdoch Mysteries, chatted about her fondness for a “smoke break” in Interview magazine. Even Justin Bieber has turned up on his own social media with a guitar in hand and a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

Smoking has re-emerged as a pop culture symbol, but why and how far does that revival reach beyond the screen and the feed? After decades of health messaging and declining rates of tobacco use, is this comeback just a curated esthetic or a nostalgic aftershock — or could it signal a real-world return? And if it does, what’s driving it?

“I don’t see the comeback of cigarettes in celebrity culture as a true return to smoking as a mainstream habit,” said Jared Oviatt, a smoker who runs the popular @cigfluencers Instagram account, which features daily images of celebrities lighting up. 

Despite the account’s steady stream of content and high engagement, he’s less than convinced we’re headed back to the days of smoking sections in restaurants and on airplanes. “Are we seeing it more often? Yes. However, I also think we’re already nearing the peak of that trend,” he said. 

Oviatt might be right to temper claims of a broader behavioural comeback. In Canada, youth smoking rates have been in steady decline since the early 2000s. Still, vaping is a growing concern: national figures show that about a quarter of high school students vape every day. And with cigarettes once again appearing more frequently in pop culture, it’s hard not to wonder if the pendulum could swing back in their favour.

Smoking isn’t just showing up in paparazzi snaps and celebrity social shares. Scroll through any social feed, and you’ll see them everywhere: as accessories, fashion statements, posh party favours. In November, more than 2,000 people gathered in Washington Square Park in New York City after a man known online as “the cigarette maestro” handed out flyers inviting strangers to join him for a five-minute group smoke that was both a communal performance and a real-world mirror of the esthetic revival playing out online. 

Then there are the everyday smokers, puffing away without any need to cultivate a public persona — like 27-year-old Alexander from Montreal, a habitual smoker who asked that his full name not be used because he doesn’t want his parents to know.

Smoking as a social signal

Alexander acknowledges the appeal is performative to some young smokers. “A ban is a powerful decree,” he said. “It marks something as dangerous, transgressive, to be avoided. But what’s more sexy than something a little dangerous?” 

Growing up in the age of social media also “fundamentally altered” how his generation connects in person, Alexander said. “The cold approach is a lost art among us. But it’s much easier to speak to someone or meet someone new when there’s a reason to do so. ‘Got a light?’ ‘Can I bum a smoke?’”

For some young people, the habit may serve as a way to cope with negative feelings that stem from broader economic and social issues.

“The anxiety over climate change, general burnout … it’s all part of it,” Oviatt said. “It also helps that [Charli] XCX seemingly has not experienced the side effects of smoking — at least in the short term. She is as popular and beautiful as ever. That’s hardly an anti-smoking ad, is it?” he said, noting how celebrity imagery can obscure real health risks.

Have we forgotten the risks?

Some smokers may have simply lost sight of just how serious those side effects are. 

For decades, anti-smoking messaging has been ubiquitous in Canada, while overall tobacco use rates have been on a steady decline. Have today’s youth grown up in a world so full of anti-smoking norms that the danger no longer feels real?

“When I was younger, mainstream television and films were mostly void of smoking, or did not make it look appealing,” said Alexander. “That’s where I see the biggest change — increasingly so, mainstream media is becoming comfortable again with communicating the sex appeal of cigarettes.” 

“Let’s be honest,” Oviatt said, “a photo of someone smoking a cigarette on Instagram is going to land a lot better than one of them holding a neon vape you can play Brick Breaker on.”

He believes smoking has become cultural shorthand. It’s “a signal that someone is tapped into the current mood or zeitgeist in a somewhat meaningful way,” Oviatt said.

But the reality is, as always, far less glamorous than what we see curated on social media. 

“To someone in their early 20s who has recently taken up smoking, I would say that they should quit as soon as possible.- Dr. Mark J. Eisenberg

Dr. Mark J. Eisenberg, the director of the cardiovascular health services research group and cardiac catheterization laboratory at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, points out that while conventional cigarettes have been denormalized, doctors continue to be concerned about both smoking and vaping in the population. 

“We are particularly concerned about the high rates of vaping among youth,” he said.

While the long-term risks associated with vaping are still being studied, Eisenberg says the facts are clear about cigarettes: “Smoking continues to be a major drain on the healthcare system. It continues to be the major modifiable risk factor for coronary disease, emphysema and lung cancer, for example.”

Some may view a return to cigarette smoking as “better the devil you know” when it comes to nicotine addiction and oral vices. But health experts strongly dispute this.  

“To someone in their early 20s who has recently taken up smoking, I would say that they should quit as soon as possible,” Eisenberg said. “The longer they smoke, the harder it will be to stop and the more likely that they will develop smoking-related diseases — and shorten their lifespan.”

Nostalgia and disillusionment

Of course, while anti-smoking messaging may have become so constant it faded into background noise for some, others know the dangers but still reach for the pack.

Alexander, for his part, may be young, but he’s hardly unreflective about the reasons behind his habit — or its risks. He’s aware that smoking is addictive and harmful, not to mention the fact that a billion-dollar industry still thrives on those harms.

He also acknowledges the contradiction between understanding the harms and continuing the habit. “It’s an existential issue,” he said, offering his own interpretation of why he keeps smoking. “The life we were told we could live when we were children increasingly revealed itself to be untrue.” He says it’s a feeling familiar to many in his generation. Some push forward through the uncertainty, while others, he says, choose to “accept futurelessness, light up a ciggie and try to have a good time now.”

Even if cigarettes appear fashionable again, smoking remains a habit with consequences that are neither romantic nor abstract — a reality public health experts say has not changed.