Have you heard? Smoking is back. Or rather, have you seen?
Kylie Jenner lit up on the cover of Vanity Fair. Madonna and Hailey Bieber posed with cigarettes in Interview. Cool girl fashion brands Khaite and Dôen have been handing out branded packs at parties.
Zendaya’s character Rue is shown puffing away in the most recent series of Euphoria, where she literally works in a smoke shop. One fan even asked on Reddit what brand she favoured.
Cigarettes’ return to pop culture has hardly been subtle. Dedicated Instagram accounts post current and archival shots of celebrities looking stylish while increasing their risk of developing lung cancer by about 25 times, and publications collate listicles of stars who smoke.
Public health non-profit Truth Initiative’s Lights, Camera, Tobacco? report found that tobacco depictions in the 15 most popular streaming shows among 15-to-24-year-olds rose by 110% between 2021 and 2022. More than half (53%) of young people’s most-watched shows featured tobacco imagery. Three of the top eight were animations, including The Simpsons.
Tobacco imagery in music videos has also increased. In 2021, almost 13% of top Billboard music videos depicted smoking. By 2022 that had more than doubled to 28%.
‘Heaps of my friends smoke!’
Those trends have experts worried. “We are concerned about people of any age taking up smoking. Young people are particularly influenced by their peer group,” says Rachael Andersen, Quit director at Cancer Council Victoria.
“Gratuitous depictions of smoking in film and music, on streaming services, down fashion runways, across social media and amongst the celebrity elite all contribute to the false notion that smoking is ‘cool’,” she says.
“Big tobacco has been using cultural cachet to promote its lethal products for decades. When used as intended, smoking still kills two in three lifetime users.”
Australia has one of the lowest daily smoking rates in the world. Between 1991 and 2010, the rate of daily smokers fell from 24% to 15%. Last decade showed that trend continuing, with rates continuing to decrease annually to 2019. But in June, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that nicotine consumption had risen by 40% between 2017 and 2025. It’s not a localised trend. Parts of England are also seeing smoking rates rise for the first time since 2006.
Levi is a 22-year-old personal trainer who is also studying sport science. Despite his health-focused work and study life, he’s a self-described occasional smoker. “I definitely see a lot more people smoking than I used to,” he says.
Melbourne florist Briony Wright remembers smoking’s former halcyon days, or rather nights. In the 1990s she worked in fashion media and DJed after hours.
“It felt like … one big ad for how cool smoking was,” she recalls. “Everyone basically knew it was bad for them but it was so intrinsic to any interesting friend group, counter-or-subculture that it was just part of life.”
That shifted over time. By the start of the 2020s a growing focus on health and wellness had literally left smokers out in the cold. But now, Wright has noticed her friends lighting up again. “Heaps of my friends smoke!” Although, she adds: “They also go to the gym.”
The recent resurgence of smoking in Australia is tied with the rise in illegal tobacco and e-cigarette use.
In July 2024 Australia banned the recreational sale and importation of recreational vapes. A major driver of that ban was concern around the rise in e-cigarette use among younger people. But new issues arose.
“I think a lot of people picked up smoking cigarettes as a way to weirdly try to stop vaping,” says Levi. “It’s a lot easier to limit cigarettes than vaping because you have to go outside, wash your hands, brush your teeth. But with vaping you can kind of do it anywhere, anytime, very discreetly.”
His own journey from cigarettes to vapes and back reflects a broader shift. Levi began smoking cigarettes after going through a breakup. When he wanted to quit, friends recommended he try vaping. “I pretty much transitioned from one vice to another.”
He says he was addicted to vaping for about six months. “I was doing it a lot more than I was smoking.” He has now returned to smoking in an attempt to quit vaping.
As a deterrent for smokers, Australia has high taxes on cigarettes. At the time of writing, tobacconist chain Smokemark priced over-the-counter packs between $37 and $42. But recently, the illegal tobacco trade has boomed, rising from 12% of all tobacco consumed a decade ago, to 80% in 2025. Illegal tobacco refers to cigarette products that are sold “under the counter”, mainly imported from Asia and the Middle East. These black market cigarettes usually sell for around $25 a pack, but can retail for as little as $10 to $15.
“I have a bunch of friends that drive to all sorts of places trying to get either different vapes or different non-brand cigarettes,” says Levi.
The price difference isn’t just appealing to young people.
“I honestly think that the people who transitioned to vaping, or who maybe started out vaping, are all smoking cigarettes again because these cheap, off-brand tailor-made cigarettes are more widely available, making them easier to justify,” says Wright.
Levi adds: “I feel now it’s seen as very cringe or embarrassing to pull out a vape compared to smoking cigarettes.”
Romanticised nostalgia
Joanna Nilson, one of the founders and hosts of the fashion podcast and Instagram account Haute and Bothered, says the cyclical nature of fashion, especially online, has led many young people back to smoking’s heyday too. In particular she notes how people began idealising “indie sleaze” – a sort of magical reimagining of early 2000s culture – during Covid lockdowns.
“Younger people … rediscovered a lot of the party pictures and Tumblr accounts from this period, and the messiness and liberation that seemed to be documented with it – morning-after hair, dirty ballet flats, lived-in makeup and people smoking inside clubs.”
Nilson also believes smoking is aligned with other worrying health trends. Given the recent re-emphasis on “thinness as currency”, she says she’s “not surprised” people are turning to smoking as an appetite suppressant.
Another intriguing, although admittedly difficult-to-quantify theory, points to a kind of generational nihilism. In a widely read article, “I Mean, Why Shouldn’t We All Smoke Cigarettes Again?” for the Cut, author Xochitl Gonzalez considers her own temptations. Reflecting on the endless scroll of brain-melting, heartbreaking news, she admits she has been craving a drag.
When Nilson posted about her frustrations over the return of smoking on Haute and Bothered’s Instagram account, she noticed the responses largely reflected Gonzalez’s attitude.
“A lot of people were saying, ‘Well, I have to work twice as much as my parents to merely survive, let alone be able to buy a house or have a family.’ They’re stressed out and don’t see a comfortable and dignified future for themselves.”
Hannah McElhinney, co-founder of youth-focused creative agency Snack Drawer, has observed a similar feeling of disconnection. “People like Charli xcx glamorise club culture, smoking, drinking and staying out late which can feel really refreshing since we’ve been in this era of isolation and rigid wellness routines. Smoking has always been about rebellion, and so when people want to rebel against their own health, cigarettes are naturally going to have their moment,” she says.
“Big tobacco doesn’t need to do much but let it burn!”
‘Tobacco companies manipulate us’
They might not need to do much, but that doesn’t mean big tobacco isn’t engaged with this trend. A lot of time and money has gone into constructing the image of smoking as rebellious. For the first half of the 20th century, cigarette advertisements were high-style and fashion fantasies shot by legendary photographers such as Irving Penn and Sam Abell.
Then, towards the end of last century, countries began restricting the depiction of tobacco products and sponsorships in TV, movies, radio and adverts. Australia was a pioneer of this, with the federal government’s Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act, which largely banned tobacco advertising nationally in 1992. A decade later, Australia was also the first country to introduce plain packaging laws.
In response, tobacco companies “have been forced to innovate constantly to get around legislation”, says McElhinney.
The University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group has found that tobacco companies were able to indirectly promote products by aligning smoking with youth culture and employing third-party advocates, such as influencers, to carry marketing messages.
In June in Australia, fashion retailer Billy Bones Club had a complaint upheld by Ad Standards over a YouTube ad depicting young people smoking in a convertible and at a barbecue. They noted the presentation of cigarettes framed them as part of a “rebellious youth lifestyle”.
Given tobacco has come with aggressive health warnings for decades, it’s possible to become numb to just how bad smoking really is for you.
Andersen says: “Smoking is highly addictive and causes 16 types of cancer. Sadly, 24,000 Australians die from smoking-related illness every year – that’s 66 families losing a loved one each day.”
Social trends, public policy and advertising have placed smoking at the centre of mainstream culture before, but public policy has also helped push it back to the fringes too.
McElhinney is hopeful Australia can see a similar change again, but she knows it will be a difficult fight. She suggests that rather than simply focusing on how bad smoking is for our bodies, public health campaigns can be used to educate how “tobacco companies manipulate us through insidiously inserting themselves into culture”. The assumption being: if you can spot the tricks you might be less likely to fall for them.
Now taking on big tobacco isn’t as simple as banning glossy print ads, she says. “Over the past decade, subtle culture-led advertising has become best in class.
“As big tobacco continues to innovate and shapeshift, it’s hard for consumers and public health advocates to keep up.”
Additional reporting by Daisy Dumas.
