Celebrities are making cigarettes look cool again — and that has doctors worried

Doctors and tobacco researchers have seen this movie before. They’ve spent years studying how on-screen smoking and celebrity habits influence teenagers and young adults, especially those who are still forming identity and trying on personas.

The medical reality hasn’t changed just because the aesthetics have. Cigarette smoke is still linked to lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and chronic breathing problems. Nicotine is still highly addictive. Many people who start with an occasional “social cigarette” discover a year later that they’re lighting up every day and struggling to stop.

Public health experts are especially uneasy because overall smoking rates in many countries are at historic lows. That progress took decades of regulation, taxation and campaigning. A cultural swing that makes smoking look glamorous again may not immediately show up in the data, but it risks nudging the next wave of 18-25-year-olds towards a habit that is genuinely hard to quit.

The pull of ‘retro cool’ and the vibe of rebellion

Part of the renewed appeal is simple: for today’s young adults, cigarettes feel retro. They’re associated with old rock photos, French films, 90s New York and moody posters from a pre-smartphone world. In a culture where almost everything is documented on screens, stepping outside for a cigarette can feel strangely analogue and “real”.

Some young smokers describe cigarettes as a social prop. You step out of a noisy bar, share a light with strangers, and suddenly you’re talking to people you might never have approached otherwise. For some, vaping feels clinical, plasticky and over-engineered. Cigarettes, by contrast, feel raw, messy and honest — exactly the vibe many want to project.

The danger, of course, is that this “look” comes with an addiction attached. What starts as an occasional weekend cigarette “for the aesthetic” can, quietly, become a daily ritual your body begins to demand.

Social media, ‘cigfluencers’ and the aesthetics of smoking

On Instagram and TikTok, entire accounts now revolve around catching celebrities and influencers smoking. The tone is often tongue-in-cheek, but the effect is simple: smoking becomes something you scroll past again and again, attached to faces and outfits people admire.

These images don’t come with warning labels. There’s no wheezing ex-smoker in the next frame, no cancer ward, no yellowed teeth. It’s all sharp cheekbones, interesting clothes and grainy, film-style photos. That one-sided presentation is exactly what worries doctors who watched how older generations were influenced by cigarette ads and cinema.

Even when young smokers say they “know the risks”, constant repetition of glamorous smoking imagery erodes the emotional weight of those risks. The health consequences feel far away; the social payoff feels immediate.

A habit that’s harder to drop than the aesthetic

Many of the young adults who have taken up cigarettes in the last couple of years say the same thing: they plan to quit “at some point”. For now, it’s just a social thing, just a look, just a phase.

The problem is that nicotine doesn’t work on our timelines. It rewires habit pathways quietly. A cigarette after a drink becomes a cigarette after a stressful class, then one on the walk home, then one before bed. By the time the trendiness wears off, the dependence may not.

None of that means culture is about to snap back to the heavy-smoking era of the 70s and 80s. But it does mean there is a real risk that a generation that had largely sidestepped cigarettes may be nudged back towards them, not because of tobacco ads, but because celebrities, influencers and creatives made smoking look like part of the modern mood board.

The aesthetic will move on eventually. The question is how many people will be left with a very old-fashioned addiction long after the trend has passed.