Gen Z seems to be on a mission to make cigarettes cool again. On social media, they joke about cigs that "don't count" (drunk cig, vacation cig, casino cig, girls cry sesh sig, boat cig) and how good it feels to give in to your cravings.
"Sometimes you just need a cigarette (It's 8:14 am on a Thursday) (idc)," one TikToker says in a clip showing her walking around the city.
Then there's the "cigfluencers." Instagram accounts like @Cigfluencers curate photos of pop stars and actors smoking in candid shots or while filming: Hailey Bieber, Addison Rae, Lily-Rose Depp, Jenna Ortega and Hudson Williams (the rising star of "Heated Rivalry") have all made appearances on the page.
Celebrities have long smoked, of course. Still, unless they were European, they mostly kept it under wraps as smoking became more culturally taboo. But as the existence of cigfluencers shows, Gen Z actors and pop stars are increasingly unafraid of getting papped with a Parliament.
Smoking is becoming a casual signifier of "cool" in film, TV and music, too: When Sabrina Carpenter headlined Coachella earlier this month, a prop cigarette dangled from her lips as drove off-set in a vintage 1950s Ford Thunderbird. (The 26-year-old pop star "smokes" in music videos for her songs "Manchild" and "House Tour," too.)
When Vanity Fair put Kylie Jenner, 28, on its cover a few months ago, the reality star completed her look -- a balconette bra, high-rise trousers and black riding boots -- with a cigarette pursed between her lips.
Many non-smoking millennials are surprised. Ariella Epstein, a 31-year-old TikTok content creator who smoked from ages 13 to 26, is surprised by Gen Z's embrace of smoking, if only because of how taboo it became in the last few decades.
"I remember my dad vividly fake coughing when we walked past someone smoking or past the smoking section of a restaurant," she told HuffPost. "I think those of us in our 30s saw the very tail end of smoking sections in restaurants and airports."
"I think I knew smoking was back when I saw Hudson Williams smoking," she said of the 25-year-old TV heartthrob. "He's so young!"
Of course, people never stopped smoking. But after decades of anti-smoking campaigns, legislation spotlighting the habit's serious health risks and a dramatic long-term decline -- adult smoking rates fell from 42.4% in 1965 to 9.9% in 2024 -- how did cigarettes manage to become cool again?
Cigarettes are perennial symbols of maturity and rebellion, and that's never changed, said Robert N. Proctor, a professor of history at Stanford and the author of "Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition."
"American still smoke billions of cigarettes every year, and a couple thousand kids start smoking every day," he said. "Cigarette makers know all this, and actually exploit it, talking about smoking as 'acceptable rebellion.' For decades they've talked about high schoolers as 'the base of our business,' and little has changed in that regard."
Then there's the fact that cigarettes are still featured prominently in movies, which Proctor said is one of the leading causes of taking up smoking.
"Cigarette makers also promote smoking in all kinds of ways outside the U.S., which then get filtered back into this country," he said. "We tend to think locally; they think globally."
Even as cigarette smoking seemingly went away, nicotine never did. In 2023, adults aged 21-24 had the highest e-cigarette usage rates (15.5%) compared to other age groups. Vaping is generally considered less harmful than smoking, though the full long-term effects won't be known for years.
Interestingly, some in Gen Z say they've quit vaping by starting cigarettes. Studies show that most people who vape don't want to vape long-term, but there's no consensus on how to help people quit, according to Deanna Halliday, a post-doctoral scholar at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco.
"When vaping exploded in popularity among youth, there was no offramp for those who eventually wanted to stop. Oddly enough, cigarettes might be seen as a potential offramp," she said. (For the record, Halliday doesn't recommend swapping one vice for the other. There are over-the-counter nicotine replacement therapies like gums and patches worth trying instead.)
Teens are vaping in record numbers -- but fewer than ever are drinking. Studies show that they consume roughly 20% less alcohol per capita than millennials. As a whole, Gen Z also tends to prefer weed to drinking.
"People used to say smoking and drinking go together like milk and cookies. These days, pairing smoking cannabis and tobacco is very common," said Pamela Ling, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who researches how the tobacco industry targets youth and young adults.
Ling noted that a recent study of young adults showed co-use of tobacco and cannabis is more common than using tobacco or cannabis alone.
"Since smoking is still the most common form of cannabis use -- both joints and blunts -- rather than say, an edible, it may make it easier to progress from cannabis smoking to cigarette smoking," Ling told HuffPost.
What may have scared millennials off smoking is the widespread anti-smoking public health campaigns on television. Any kid who grew up in California, for instance, is probably still scared by the state's Department of Public Health's "Voicebox" ad in which a raspy-voiced smoker, Debi Austin, recounts how she got addicted to smoking at age 13.
In the 1996 commercial, she asks, "They say nicotine isn't addictive?" before placing a lit cigarette into the hole in her neck to demonstrate her inability to quit. (Austin died of laryngeal cancer in 2013 at age 63.)
We've regressed since then on those kinds of PSAs.
"There was a surgical strike eliminating tobacco control programs across the country last year," Ling said. "The CDC Office on Smoking and Health (OSH) was eliminated, and they were responsible for the major national educational campaigns including Tips from Former Smokers which featured real people suffering the consequences of smoking and prevented a quarter of a million early deaths."
OSH also funded most state tobacco control programs including campaigns like the aforementioned Debi Austin ad. States and U.S. territories -- which received the bulk of the agency's $240 million in funding -- relied on that support to operate quitlines (like 1-800-QUIT-NOW), offering counseling and access to medications, and to roll out other anti-tobacco measures such as cigarette taxes and restaurant smoking bans.
It's not a coincidence that the office was eliminated by the Trump administration, Ling said.
"The current administration has strong ties to the tobacco industry, andthe tobacco companies are trying to rebrand themselves as nicotine pharmaceutical companies that purport to want to develop 'safer' new nicotine products, whilethey continue to make most of their money from cigarettes," Ling said.
What we need is public campaigns that highlight the less-glamorous realities of smoking: Since 1964, smoking has claimed more than 20 million American lives.It still kills roughly 480,000 people in the U.S. each year -- about 1 in 5 deaths.
Globally, tobacco use is estimated to have killed 100 million people in the 20th century alone, exceeding the death toll of World War II. By any measure, it remains the leading cause of preventable death in the modern world.
According to the American Psychological Association, 18-34-year-olds are reporting higher stress levels than older generations, with the age group saying their average stress level is a 6 out of 10, compared with a 3.4 among people aged 65 and older.
For some, smoking gives them a break from that stress, even if they know about the health risks.
"Growing up, smoking was definitely something we were encouraged not to do, but if you're Gen Z, your entire adult life has been plagued by economic instability and environmental concerns,”said Frankie,a 24-year-old who smokes in social settingsand asked to use his first name only to protect his privacy.
“It’s causing people to reject some of these long-term concernsand focus on short-term pleasures,”
he explained.“Why forgo short-term pleasure for delayed gratification in a world that we’re not sure will even exist?”
That said, Frankie wouldn’t say people smoke cigarettes now more than they did before.“I just think they’re less ashamed of it,”
he said.
For the most part, everyone still knows that smoking is harmful.
"I've never spoken to anyone who genuinely believes, 'Maybe cigarettes aren't so bad,'" Halliday said. "More social education and public service announcements are always a good thing, but many people are smoking despite health education and not because of the lack of it."
One of the things Halliday admires most about members of Gen Z is how socially conscious they are. If concerns about their own health aren't enough of a reason to stay away from cigarettes, she wonders if it would be effective to draw attention to how their smoking impacts everyone else.
For example, smoking cigarettes can and does kill nonsmokers, she said.The Centers for Disease Control estimates that there are over 480,000 deaths attributed to smoking annually,and41,000 of those deaths are attributed to secondhand smoke,although that estimate might even be too low.
Not even pets are safe from smoking.
"Animals who live with people who smoke cigarettes are also exposed to secondhand and thirdhand smoke -- it's sometimes called second paw smoke," Halliday said."This increases the risk of disease,cancer and early death in our furry family members.Is it worth the risk?"
Smoking in films has made a bold return in recent years, as if every show is "Mad Men."Hollywood has a responsibility to cut back on product placement and glamorous portrayals of smokers, said Stanton Glantz,a professor at the University of California,San Francisco,and longtime critic of the tobacco industry.
In 2001, Glantz launched Smokefree Media,an initiative designed to reduce youth exposure to smoking imagery in films.It advocates for policy changes -- such as R ratings for films with smoking,anti-tobacco adsand certification of no payoffs --to prevent tobacco companies from recruiting new,young smokers through media.
"We made a lot of progress during my Smokefree Media campaign,but there has been some backsliding since it ended," Glantz said."We need to end tobacco presentation in entertainment."
Lastly, Halliday thinks that appealing to Gen Z's environmental and sustainability concerns could be an effective way to encourage quitting, since cigarette (and e-cigarette) waste is a major environmental hazard.
"Cigarette butts are not biodegradable, and many end up eaten by wildlife or leaching toxins into our water, on our beaches, and other places in our environment,”she said.“Not only that, smoking is responsible for many wildfires across the country each year.The question we should be asking to encourage people to quit is,'Where is your next cigarette going to end up?'}