What’s With All The Smoking is Cool Again Headlines?

Have you noticed an uptick in articles claiming that smoking is cool again? Well, you’re not alone. I’ve read a lot of pieces from a variety of publications over the last few years that suggest things such as smoking is on the rise among youths, and that it is once again becoming a trendy counterculture symbol. 

Let’s take a deep dive into the topic to see what is happening.

Was smoking ever cool?

There is a certain explanation of smoking’s once lofty position in culture that explains the popularity of smoking as a pure function of advertising. While messaging from Big Tobacco advertising and stylish representations in early to mid-20th-century Hollywood movies were a big factor, it oversimplifies what happened. 

It’s hard to talk about the growth of smoking in the last century without thinking about World War 1 and 2. Tobacco and cigarettes were given as part of soldiers’ rations, and they took on numerous functions, such as suppressing nerves, bonding rituals, and also functioning as a kind of informal trench currency. When men returned from the frontline, the habit spread throughout the civilian population. 

Another interesting cause from around the same time involved women’s liberation. Smoking was taboo for women in the early part of the 20th century. As a result, lighting up a cigarette was seen as an act of rebellion, which lent the practice some nonconformist cache.

Finally, we can’t underestimate the influence of French cafe culture. Beloved thinkers Camus and Sartre smoking filterless cigarettes was very appealing to a certain category of people, and they became a byword for intellectualism. 

So, basically, Big Tobacco was able to capitalise on the association between cigarettes and a variety of movements and seismic events. Effective advertising sells people a lifestyle they want to have, and being some variety of tough, rebellious, smart, or countercultural proved irresistible to many. That’s why the marketing worked.

Can smoking even become cool again?

In the last century, smoking was a status symbol that marked out users as modern and sophisticated. Victorian ideas of the day gave way to mass urbanisation and the birth of consumerism, as being seen as some old-fashioned, provincial square became something to fear for younger people.

This was a remarkable time of change in Western countries. While technological shifts are rapid these days, the average person isn’t starting from the same baseline. As such, I don’t see how cigarettes can be “cool” in the 21st century, because they’re not connected to social change and transformation in the same manner. 

At best, modern smoking can take a faint stab at being rebellious in a suffocating nanny state society. Remember, Gen Z have been bombarded with messaging, much of it around public health. Over-zealous COVID-era rules and a general rise in authoritarian public health cranks have surely had an impact. Throw on top their noted desire for analog things in a digital age, and you can make an argument for why this generation might be more likely to take up smoking. 

But, just because pop stars smoke occasionally and newspaper articles are worried about smoking, do these concerns actually connect with the real world? 

Is Gen Z smoking more?

The gap between youth nicotine use data and youth nicotine use reporting is frequently so wide and dishonest that the presence of panicked headlines means very little. So, let’s see what the data says.

ASH UK’s Young people and smoking factsheet makes for some interesting reading. 

When it comes to 11 to 15-year-olds, smoking has dropped considerably over the last 20 years. However, between 2021 and 2023, we see a rise from 1% to 1.2%. So, not a massive movement, but the trend has been bucked.

For 15-year-olds during the same period, smoking dropped from 3.3% to 2.2%. So, when it comes to this cohort, smoking has not become cool or more frequent.

If we look at the latest ONS data, a similar picture emerges for 18-24-year-olds. Between 2023 and 2024, those numbers dropped from 9.8% to 8.1%. Higher than I expected, but still below the national averages of above 11%.

OK, but it’s 2026. So, is there anything more recent to draw upon?

Actually, there is. The retailer Haypp dug into this very question when it surveyed 2,500 UK citizens last year. They found that 30% of respondents figured smoking was coming back in fashion, with one in five suggesting the habit was becoming cool again.

Ultimately, there isn’t much to go on if we want up-to-the-minute data. 

Final thoughts

I’m going to call it. Smoking is not cool again. A few influencers or pop stars lighting has not moved the needle in any credible way. The thing is, despite all the garbage they’ve been fed, youths know that there are far safer ways to consume nicotine, and that’s reflected in the data.

As mentioned above, the only thing that could conceivably make smoking cool again is a reaction against the monumental uncoolness of tobacco control or public health.