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Before this, clever executives during the World Wars had sent free packs of cigarettes to the frontlines, effectively ensuring an entire generation of loyally addicted customers. By the 1960’s, cigarette use per year per capita in the United States was calculated to be over 4,000 units (11 cigarettes a day). It was right around this time that policymakers and scientists started to push back against Big Tobacco in an organized manner, leading to a gradual but legitimate decline in national usage.

Sales have been dwindling pretty steadily since then and the saving grace of tobacco companies in recent years has been the e-cigarette. ZYNs — the nicotine pouches that can be placed discreetly between your gums and lip — have also had a remarkable few years, yet their success is impeding the sales of both traditional cigarettes and vapes. These products are proof that tobacco and nicotine companies are trying to evolve, but ultimately facing an uphill battle. A real return to their golden days has long seemed out of the question, until recently.

Are Cigarettes Back?

Last month, Esther Zuckerman from The New York Times suggested that cigarettes might be making a comeback; posed the same question on Substack in December; along with Danielle Pergament in Airmail. Charli XCX and Addison Rae get name-dropped multiple times, as well as Dakota Johnson in The Materialists and Jeremy Allen White in The Bear (I once wrote a very business-forward newsletter on Season 1 that you can read here). While a return to cigarettes has yet to be reflected in the data, there definitely seems to be an increase in media representation taking place.

Anecdotally speaking, I agree with these writer’s suspicions. When I first moved to New York City I was transitioning into the construction industry, where smoking is the norm and regarded by some men as a rite of passage. It wasn’t until last year that I started to clock younger, more image-conscious demographics lighting up around the city. Nowadays, it feels like every other bar has a group of four or five aspiring models—smoke hanging off them like ornaments—digging through the pockets of their baggy jeans for another loosey.

Some suggest this resurgence, if there is a resurgence, to be correlated to a rise in nihilism catalyzed by the chaotic and corrupt nature of modernity. “Why not take a puff? It’s all burning down anyways” type of stuff. This is certainly the posture of some people, mixed with a relatively straightforward desire to calm anxiety through a mixture of nicotine and deep breathing. And, obviously, some people are just plain addicted. Yet, I find it difficult to believe that our celebrities are somehow feeling doomsdayish. In my mind, the ostensible uptick of cigarette usage in popular media is a hopeful sign, albeit ultimately misguided— an attempt to revive the spirit of rebellion through aesthetic means. Unfortunately, I am not convinced they will be successful.

Transgression

For starters, 2025 is a tough year for sinners.

If transgression means violating a boundary or breaking a social law, then transgressing was much easier in the taboo-addled, ultra-moralistic societies of yesteryear. Scandalizing the public was as simple as Madonna rolling around on MTV or Mr. Rogers sharing a pool with Officer Clemmons. I am far too young to remember the controversy courted by Gone with the Wind’s Clark Gable when he spoke that utterly vile line—”Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” But the tameness of such a remark in comparison to today’s standards makes me chuckle.

Indeed—in the same way that HL Mencken once joked that puritanism was “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,” we might infer the inverse regarding modern liberalism. It is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is being denied their bliss. Cancel culture has all but died out, and the only way to effectively slander anyone is to accuse them of some sort of pedophilia (gratefully, that standard is still in place). A lot of the conduct that would shock our grandparents now feels like a banality.

This shift has been important in many ways; it certainly paved the path for huge advancements among previously marginalized communities. Yet, the unintentional cost of this kind of progress is that we also sacrificed the rebels. There can be no mutiny in a world where everything is permitted—you can’t take something too far when all the lines have been erased. In this environment, non-conformism is a thankless endeavor and every iconoclast a stillborn.

Yet, courtesy of the health and wellness industry (and more than a sprinkle from therapy culture) a new Constitution has been forming. In Order to form a more perfect self, my generation has prioritized our youth, our wellbeing, our sleep, our skin, and our workouts above all else. The beauty and wellness industry has become largely iatrogenic—an unvirtuous cycle that profits off of problems and insecurities invented by its own machinations. This is, in part, connected to the supposed death of parties in New York City, killed by the need of would-be partygoers to wake up early for their pilates class or the aversion to the loss of muscle gains caused by alcohol. Invoking one’s wellness has become the trump card of all reasoning—it cannot be overridden.

While discussing this with my friend, , he used the perfect word to describe it. Health is wealth, yes; but it has also become a form of righteousness. It is visible evidence that your life and affections are properly ordered.

Don’t Hold Your Breath

With the law of health and wellness as background, we can understand how smokers have gone from being condescendingly looked down upon, as they were in the early aughts and teens, to returning as the edgy nonconformists. Smoking in the age of Erehwon is a zag when everyone is zigging—a rare opportunity to break from social norms by being occasionally indulgent, impulsive, and counterproductive. argued along similar lines in an old newsletter about smoking:

“The basic strategy of enlightened consumerist hedonism is to deprive enjoyment of its excessive dimension, of its disturbing surplus, of the fact that it serves nothing. Enjoyment is tolerated, solicited even, but on condition that it is healthy, that it doesn’t threaten our psychic or biological stability.”

But this is precisely where I become disillusioned with the luminaries we see taking puffs on the silver screen—they don’t take their rebellion seriously enough. This is not to suggest that its merely performative, but that it lacks conviction. They smoke, sure, but their teeth have never been whiter, their flesh never softer, their nails never stronger, and their faces never cleaner. They never actually break the expectations they appear to be lashing out against. In fact, they take it farther than the doctors of old Camel campaigns by somehow acting as adjunct marketers for both the beauty industry and the tobacco industry at the same time. In other words, the aesthetic of rebellion is passed along, but without the spirit. It is flash without the fire—all smoke and no flame.

As a result, I continue my search for a true rebellion to inspire me. In an era where the narrow path of unselfish individualism is pressed violently like it is today—by Huxley’s nightmare on one side and Orwell’s on the other—then we are in sore need of revolutionaries, alternative thinkers, and rule-breakers. Whether they smoke or not matters little to me—but if they do, I know they will be the one’s inhaling.

Thanks for reading! I leave you with a quote from my beloved Soren:

“It is the thought, not the incidentals of expression, that essentially makes an exposition unpopular. Socrates was the most unpopular in Greece because he said the same thing as the simplest person but meant infinitely much by it. To be able to stick to one thing, to stick to it with ethical passion and undauntedness of spirit… this is unpopular in any age for anyone.”