Is cigarette smoking making a comeback?
I certainly hope not.
It seems it’s not a big comeback. But maybe a little bit:
“I’ve definitely seen an uptick in singles describing themselves as ‘sometimes’ smokers — not pack-a-day smokers, but occasional, where it’s tied to nightlife, travel, aesthetic and intimacy,” Ashleigh Rodosta, a Gotham-based matchmaker and relationship coach, told The Post. “The post-sex cigarette is also making a comeback.” …
“What’s ironic is that many of these same people are otherwise intensely wellness-oriented — cold plunges, peptides, clean eating, the whole thing,” she continued. “So cigarettes are showing up less as a real lifestyle and more as an occasional indulgence tied to image, mood and social setting.”
I have to say that, back when smoking was far more popular, it often was indeed “tied to image, mood, and social setting.”
I smoked cigarettes during my first two years of college and then never again. My smoking was very situational: to look cool, or because I was bored. Or both. I smoked while sitting around with friends in the cafeteria after meals, in boring lecture classes, while writing term papers, and at parties. I never inhaled because I actually hated that. But I was a whiz at blowing smoke rings.
[NOTE: I’m taking a day-long break from writing about the Iran war.]
A good friend of mine for the last 3 years, has had a year long streak of very bad luck, or perhaps “misfortune” is a better descriptor. We visit at least once a week and a few months ago I was surprised by her taking cigarette breaks. I don’t think she plans on sticking with it, and she’s tackling some of her other challenges now, so I’m hoping the smoking will cease in due time.
She’s also a generation younger than I, and I might have assumed that younger folks just don’t smoke anymore, but not in this case.
While I’m not recommending smoking as a weight-loss plan, some people have tied the decline in smoking to the rise in obesity. Of course there are overweight smokers too:).
Enjoyed almost every puff. Cigarettes and pipe. Had crept up to 2.5 packs a day at one point. Gave it up 35 years ago. I gather I’m still at an elevated risk of lung cancer and emphysema.
Neo, this post made it to Instapundit.
I’m 79 and when I was born in 1947, 45% of the country smoked. 55 to 60% for men and roughly 30 to 40% for women. Today it’s like 11%.
I volunteered for the US Army in 1966 – back then cigarettes in military were $1.70.That was for a carton – 10 packs or 200 cigarettes. I remember everyone bitching when they went to $2.00 a few years later.
Now cigarettes are $6.50 to $13.00 a pack of 20 depending on your state, so to smoke a pack day as many of us did back then costs you roughly $2,500 to $5,000 a year. You really haveto want to smoke at those prices. No wonder people choose vaping and weed.
I will tell you one important side effect that was actually good. It kept your weight down and I wonder if we still smoked at the same level as we did 80 years ago if obesity would not be such a problem because when you smoke the last thing you want is food. It is one hell of an appetite suppressent. In the 1950’s to early 1960’s I don’t ever remember seeing a fat person. Overweight perhaps, yes, but not obese as so many people are today.
It has occurred to me that I could probably lose the ten to fifteen pounds I’d like to get rid of by taking up smoking. I’m almost 77, so what the heck. The only problem is that I tried it a few times in college and really disliked the smoke.
It’s an anti-depressant.
I grew up in my grandparent’s house in the 50’s with my mom and my uncle, who smoked Camels (“I’d walk a mile”) and Lucky Strikes (“L.S.M.F.T.”). My grandmother highly disapproved, but my uncle picked up the habit during 4 years in the Pacific during WWII, so grandma allowed.
I really liked the smell of cigarette smoke back then. I think it was better because they used milder tobacco – without filters. The filters let the tobacco companies use cheaper, harsher tobacco, which the smokers could inhale, but the smoke from the burning end was quite acrid.
I was a heavy smoker during my military days. I continued when I got out and finished college and went to law school. One Christmas, I came down with bronchial pneumonia and couldn’t smoke at all. When I healed, I had gone 4 or 5 days with nary a puff, so I put on my running shoes and thought I’d see how much damage I had done to my lungs from smoking. I was shocked, and immediately went cold turkey (with the help of tangerine LifeSavers!). That was fifty years ago (knocking on wood . . .).
I once read a description of the immediate effects of smoking. It could cool you out, when stressed. It could rev you up, when tired.
The whole ritual of picking up a pack, taking out a cig, lighting it, inhaling and exhaling was comforting.
It gave you something to do with your hands in social situations. It looked cool.
It sounded like a great drug.
Except for what it did to your health.
When I was in high school, my German teacher used to smoke cigars in class. When I complained that I “couldn’t breathe” he laughed and said “Who the hell gives a damn?”
I seem to recall that, the first time I rode on an airplane, the stewardess passed out free minipacks of cigarettes. Did that really happen or did I dream it?
Ah, the Good Old Days!
I’m almost 77, so what the heck.
That is funny. I always joked I was going to take up smoking someday because I don’t want to live too long. That’s not entirely a joke. My dad and his four siblings all lived past 90, and frankly they all lived too long. Their bodies outlived their minds. Only problem is – they all smoked! So evidently I can’t kill myself that way. I like to think this means I’ve got great genes and can do damn near anything I want.
My paternal grandfather smoked unfiltered Camels for over sixty years. He quit when he got out of breath running to catch a bus at age 88. Died peacefully in his sleep at 93. HIs mind was fine until the last four months or so. We should all be so lucky.
Linked article is fact-free narrative. Note the complete absence of any statistics, which show that smoking is at historic lows among youth and adults. Probably more earned media marketing, by the PR team representing a tobacco company.
The story about the German teacher reminds me of a kind of nasty incident from my high school days. The German teacher at my HS was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. One day a student raised his hand and asked, “Can I open a window? It’s hot as Auschwitz in here”.
Not sure if the story is less nasty, or more nasty, when you know the student was also Jewish …
The data showing “smoking at historic lows” is 4-5 years old. It well could be the story above is just “anecdotal” but not impossible. Though a dramatic reversal is unlikely.
My negligent parents let me smoke starting around age 12, and I quit when I ended my military enlistment at age 21.
I thought smoking was “cool,” and at one point I was smoking a pack or pack and a half of Luckies a day.
Stupidly (and obviously addicted) I used to” light ’em up,” even when I had a bad cold, and the coughing and hacking which I knew would follow felt like I was coughing up a lung.
Read–and believed–all of those articles saying that, soon after you stopped smoking your lungs started to clear themselves out, and slowly returned to normal.
Fast forward 60 years, and I have had diagnosed Emphysema/COPD now for several years, caused, says my primary care, by my smoking.
My morning routine now starts each day with a couple of puffs from my “maintenance inhaler,” and I carry around–and sometimes have to use–a more powerful “emergency” inhaler, and my Emphysema/COPD is supposedly a fairly mild case.
When congestion/coughing get really bad, there is an Albuterol nebulizer I now own, sitting, waiting in the closet.
@FOAF:Though a dramatic reversal is unlikely.
Newer data is not showing any uptick, on the contrary it’s under 10% as of 2024, the lowest it’s ever been since 1965, but it’s not in a nice graph like the data through 2022, and the official statistics have a long lag.
The linked article is like any other media “trend” article, quotes from 4 or 5 people who talk about doing the thing and lots of pictures.
My Mom was a heavy smoker. Camels, LS’s, then filtered, and menthol flavored. She died at age 61 of a stroke.
I was thinking of buying a Cigar and smoking on porch. But now not going to. I would smoke a cigar when I was mowing my back field. I did smoke a pipe when I was in College, but stopped when it started to burn my tongue.
It never bothered me as a kid, my dad did up to a point, a accident stopped him cold. But it can’t be healthy besides a heavy financial. So hope it doesn’t come back.
Several years ago I was out walking my neighbor’s dogs. Two male adolescents initiated a short conversation about the dogs. They left, and a minute or so later, returned. They asked me if I would purchase cigarettes for them—one said they were for his mother. Yeah, right. A convenience store was nearby.
I declined to act as their front man, informing them that my father smoked and died of lung cancer. (Though he quit smoking 9 years before he died.)
I too, loved the ‘ritual’ of smoking.
Smoked from 17 to 34 and quit on a dare from my husband.
Finished the one I was holding and never had another.
No denying it, they are poison and killed people I love.
And when I started running the idea of smoking became impossible.
But I still occasionally dream about it and it feels so real I once told someone;
“Wait, I’m not waking up until I finish this!’
Leonard Cohen resumed smoking on his last lap before the Great Beyond.
It’s a joke on the cover of his final album. He’s looking out a window into the darkness. His hand is dangling out the window into the black with a cigarette between his fingers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Want_It_Darker
Former smoker, 50-odd years clean (with a couple minor back-slidings) who just got a positive (meaning good) CT scan, 2 years post-op. I donated a chunk of one lung so an oncologist could examine a couple malignant tumors in better light.
Because of the long period of no smoking, there is a strong possibility that work (1960s) in a cement plant and also a shipyard contributed some bad things to my lungs. There are still some items in the remaining lungs that interest the medicos, but today no malignancies. And, the terms “COPD” and “emphysema” are finding their way into conversations with the doctors. Oh, yeah, I’m 81.
It’s amazing how rare smoking is now. I don’t miss the stench, cigarette butts everywhere, and later, people hanging around entrances like derelicts, sucking on coffin nails. It’s actually illegal to smoke in public in my town.
I have recently lost a close relative.
She has passed on.
Her demise was brought on by a number of things, including:
—severe depression…(her husband had just died about 3 years before the start of her depression),
—an addiction to beer,
—and addiction to cigarettes.
She was 62.
That isn’t old.
Her neighbors told me she looked like she was doing fine, four days before her passing.
…Please don’t start smoking.
I “learned” to smoke in the Navy. Started with “smoke and coke” breaks in Boot Camp. In the fleet, if you were smoking a cigarette, you were OK, if you were just sitting doing nothing it was “get off your lazy butt and get to work”. If you ever wanted to take 10 minutes off your feet, you learned to smoke. Now it’s banned on most ships and bases. Times change.
It’s actually illegal to smoke in public in my town.
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I despise the karenwaffe.
I don’t know if cigarettes are up but you know what is? Nicotine pouches like Zyn. Before I retired last year I saw nearly all the millennials at work, including women, use them as a pickup along with coffee. They’d share when one was out it was so ubiquitous. For those not in the know these are nicotine (chemical extract, no tobacco) pouches you put under you lip and absorb through the gum.
Out of curiosity I tried it, and like snuff when I was I kid it made me woozie. I’d have the occasional cigar when younger, which did not have the same effect, so the patches really pound the nicotine.
TR, my sweet youngest brother died in his 50s of lung cancer a few years ago. He had been rather lost as a young man, wandering through jobs, lonely, and he medicated himself by, among other things, heavy smoking. But in his 30s he met and married an extraordinary woman who changed his life. He never smoked again, but it was too late. The damage was already done, though it didn’t show up for a couple of decades. He left a devastated family behind.
Yes, please don’t start smoking.
Doing some research, it turns out that around the time of WWII Congress debated the issue, and decided to put a couple of cigarettes into each military ration as a “morale builder.”
Years later, when veterans started to develop lung problems and cancer, some vets tried to use this action by Congress as the basis for law suits, arguing that the government was responsible for them developing cancer.
I wonder if the natural rejoinder was that, while the government might have supplied the cigarettes, the vets didn’t have to smoke them.
P.S. When I was in the military, on base you could buy cigarettes by the tax free carton for some ridiculously low price, if I recall correctly (it’s been 60 years, now), a lot less than a dollar, and booze by the bottle or even case for an equally low price.
Again, I guess as supposed “morale builders.”
Her neighbors told me she looked like she was doing fine, four days before her passing.
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You see that with lung cancer. I knew a man whose last day at work was four days before he died and another two days before he died.
P.P.S. In the barracks I was in overseas you could even have a case or two of whiskey stacked up, in plain sight in your room, if it was “squared away.”
My mother took up cancerettes as a teenager and died of emphysema at age 72. She had quit maybe a half dozen years earlier but it was too late, and experienced a steady decline of her breathing capacity. Not pretty.
Dad quit smoking when the SG report came out. He “let” us kids “smoke” by doing it wrong. The parents really discouraged us from smoking. Though it was watching my uncle die from lung cancer at 48 that really hit home. About 1981ish. A month before his first grandchild was born.
They never discussed drugs with us, so in college I smoked pot. A lot. Quit by 1999, I got tired of it.
Smoking marijuana doesn’t cause cancer or emphysema, right??
If I had one puff………one puff there would be a carton on my dash.
Selfy–If you have followed my comments here on the dangers of marijuana you would see that there is an increasing body of medical research pointing to heavy Marijuana use as causing a lot of problems.
One 25 year longitudinal study which has been following more than a thousand people found that heavy use during teenage years resulted, on average, in a significant permanent decline of 8 I.Q. points, led to symptoms of “cognitive decline,” and increased the chances in later life for developing serous psychiatric conditions including psychoses, whose onsets also occurred earlier in life than normal.
Other major studies are also discovering very negative psychiatric consequences.
To make things even more dangerous Marijuana growers have been developing varieties which, today, are many more times more powerful than the Marijuana of a few decades ago.
Additional problems are the lack of regulation of Marijuana production, with reports of marijuana being contaminated by lots of toxic pesticides and other chemicals and, in addition, that smoking Marijuana exposes you to some of the same problems with carcinogens that tobacco does.
All in all, in my view, Marijuana is not the relatively benign, essentially harmless (and, in fact, beneficial) substance that it’s proponents portray it as being.
I remember the Class A packs of ciggys!
I grew up with a mother who was a heavy smoker and I learned to hate it. Smoking makes your breath, your hair and your clothes stink. It covers things with a nasty brownish film. There’s nothing cool or sexy about it.