A New Trend for GenZ: Cigarettes Are Back

Smoking used to be pretty much ubiquitous. In his World War II Army service, my Dad always said he thought at times that he was the only guy in the entire Army who didn't smoke. When they got their cigarette allotment - yes, that was a thing - Dad would give his away, for nothing, to the first guy who asked, which generally resulted in a line of guys asking, "Hey, Clark, you going to smoke those?" And in the late 1970s, when I was working in the Woolco discount store in Cedar Falls, Iowa, my boss had an overflowing ashtray on the counter kept full by his chain-smoking, and the last thing the unfortunate stockboys had to do every evening was go around the store with pushbrooms sweeping up the butts.

All that changed in the 1980s and 1990s. Advertising was restricted, and there was a big campaign not only to reveal the health risks of cigarettes, but to make them not "cool." It was pretty successful, to the point where you can't smoke indoors much of anywhere except your own home these days.

Now, though, Generation Z seems to be coming back around to the cigarette. Washington Post columnist Jessica M. Goldstein has noted this phenomenon, which is curious.

Are cigarettes back? Depending on who you ask, cigarettes never really left. But the attitude toward cigarettes and smokers has shifted. After a period of exile to the cultural fringes — when a cig was something you snuck, or that might have gotten you scolded or side-eyed — cigarettes seem to be creeping back to the aspirational center, among both civilians and celebrities. Think of Kylie Jenner lighting a cigarette on her March Vanity Fair cover; Hailey Bieber, a cigarette sticking out of her smile and smoke unfurling in her face, in April’s Interview magazine; “Heated Rivalry’s” Connor Storrie posing with a cigarette perched in his pout while prepping for the Met Gala, in GQ. Look at Gracie Abrams, photographed with boyfriend Paul Mescal’s arm around her shoulder and a cigarette in her mouth, or to the woman exuding the most enviable aura around: Dua Lipa, whose pre-wedding Instagram photo dump captioned “anyone got a light?” featured a shot of a cigarette dangling from the pop star’s pursed lips.

It's tempting to dismiss this with the old "what goes around, comes around" observation, but I think there's something else going on here.

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Back in the day, my friends and I smoked, and most of us killed a pack a day, at least. Every day. Seven days a week. 365 days a year. It wasn't a prop or something to make us look cool; it was an honest-to-gosh addiction, one which most of us eventually broke. There's an old joke that quitting smoking is easy; I've done it seven or eight times. But there's some truth to that. In the case of my best friend, what did it for him was holding his father's hand, on his father's 50th birthday, as he died from lung cancer, still coughing up blood and lung tissue to the end.

Now, though, GenZ seem to be more what you'd call "social smokers."

Comedian Keara Sullivan, 26, grew up in the D.C. area and has lived in New York for eight years, where “a party cigarette has never gone out of fashion.” Still, she was still taken aback this year by the aftermath of a St. Patrick’s Day party on her outdoor patio in Bushwick: “It was littered with cigarettes.” Friends in her more conservative hometown used to recoil when she’d suggest a smoke break. “Now the people at the parties in D.C. are like, ‘Should we go out for a drunk cigarette?’”

Not that this is really any better, but it's still a case of comparing apples to, well, cigarettes.

Here's the thing: If you only smoked a cigarette or two a week, the health risk would be minimal. I used cigars to get off cigarettes, and I still enjoy a Parodi cigarillo now and then, perhaps 2-3 a month. My doctor, on learning that, waved it away: "At that level, we consider you a non-smoker." That appears to be what these youths are doing: Social smoking, a few in one evening, then perhaps no more for a week.

But they had better not underestimate the addictive potential of tobacco. If they want a stark lesson in it, they can talk to my friend, who is still my best friend to this day, and who, every day since that fatal one, still misses his father. And, as for the health risks, these people are adults. They should be able to figure it out for themselves.

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