Mallory is a special projects intern at Deseret News and will soon have a degree in journalism from Brigham Young University.
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KEY POINTS
- Celebrities are appearing in magazines, movies and the media with cigarettes in hand.
- Some say smoking cigarettes is nostalgic and looks aesthetic.
- It’s unclear whether this pop culture trend is increasing national smoking rates.
The Washington Post published an article Tuesday, titled, “Cigarettes are back in vogue. How did this happen?”
Other articles have popped up in recent months with titles like, “Smoking is cool again!”, “Are Cigarettes Back in Fashion?” and “Cigarettes Get a Sequel: Hollywood’s ‘Cool’ Bad Habit Is Back.”
Is this true? If those titles are shocking to you, here’s a breakdown on what the media, scientific data and others have said about recent smoking trends
Are cigarettes back?
Celebrities are the main force driving the cigarette resurgence. Recently, Kylie Jenner, Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, Gracie Abrams and Hailey Bieber, to name a few, have been seen on social media, magazine covers and in music videos holding or smoking cigarettes
Not all the celebrities have actually taken up smoking; some just posed with cigarettes to hop on the pop culture trend
Hollywood seems to be spotlighting smoking, too
“Last year, the anti-smoking group Truth Initiative found that on-screen depiction of tobacco increased for the first time since 2002, with smoking shown in 80% of the 2025 Oscar best picture nominees,”
What’s with this trend?
Multiple articles pointed to the aesthetic look and nostalgia of cigarettes as the reason they’re coming back in style
“Cigarettes feel like a vintage vice, an indulgence that belongs to a more elegant, less hideous time‚” the Post’s article said. “By comparison, vapes are modern, lame and ugly; no one, not even one of the biggest movie stars on the face of the earth, has ever looked cool sucking on one.”
The Post’s article included an editor’s note saying it “stands by the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarettes.”
There are also social media accounts that exist solely to document celebrities’ cigarette usage and capture the pop culture of smoking, like “cigfluencers” and “cigarettes.” Between the two, the accounts have nearly half a million followers
The 27-year-old behind the “cigfluencers” account, Jared Oellness culture.”
The health risks and trends
The danger associated with smoking cigarettes has not changed. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body and causes many diseases.” More than 480,000 Americans die every year from smoking or secondhand smoke exposure
In Utah, adult cigarette smoking “reached a historic low of 5.8% in 2024,” according to Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services most recent data
A University of California San Diego study published in June in the BMJ Public Health journal showed that from 1992-2022, people’s willingness to restrict smoking in various settings has increased across all 50 states, and the average prevalence of smoking has decreased
The Utah Indoor Clean Air Act, passed in 1994, “bans smoking in almost all government and private businesses in Utah.” Back when the legislation was passed, Deseret News reported Utah was the first to enact a comprehensive statewide ban on smoking in public places. The law now includes e-cigarette vapor as well
Since the most recent federal and state smoking data is from 2024, it can’t yet be determined if pop culture trends are increasing cigarette smoking in America
The official Surgeon General’s warning displayed on tobacco products and advertising can be found here
