Smoking is back, and it is everywhere

Who is smoking, and what is everyone puffing on, plus why is smoking still so cool?

Last night in old town Jeddah I was sitting at a cafe with a bunch of smokers, and it had me thinking about smoking….

Even on planes

I mean I did it, and did it for years.

I was a fag smoker. A secret primary school puffer of Gauloises and Gitanes in the late 90s. I was told by the older, more popular kids that between the World Wars it was patriotic to smoke Gauloises, associated with the “poilu” (slang for infantrymen in the trenches) and the resistance fighters. The slogan “Liberté toujours” was just right for a rebellious preteen like myself in suburban Pretoria and Johannesburg and that iconic blue packaging with an Asterix-style helmet with wings was perfect to accidentally fall out of my school bag. Camus smoked them, Sartre, Jim Morrison…and my mum was French so I even spoke the language. I was too cool for school. Right behind the tennis courts, so clandestine. 

Gitanes were harder to come by. But that art deco branding and a Spanish gypsy woman playing the tambourine on the packet appealed to the aesthete I was dying to be at age 12. My style icon, David Bowie smoked these in his persona of “The Thin White Duke” and Serge Gainsbourg never appeared in public without them in his hand. It should tell you something that in 2016 the French considered banning both these cigarette brands because they were “too cool.”

I then smoked throughout high school and into the naughts - I had a friend who was a girl, she was the “dernier cri,” the coolest person I had ever encountered in real life. A poet and writer, my lover, and a smoker. We made out, we listened to Dusty Springfield, and smoked Camel Lights on her parents’ leather sofa. The soft cigarette package had a small rectangular silver strip on its top - and every pack we smoked we’d take this label off and paste it into a scrapbook. We filled pages and pages, we bought cartons and cartons. She taught me to smoke like I meant it, and about sex and queer literature. For us, we were smokers and we thought we were the epitome of cool even though we didn’t want anyone to think we thought of ourselves this way…it was meant to be way more natural than that, of course. 

So perhaps we need to first define what smoking is. It used to mean just cigarettes - although that is still the most common form of tobacco use worldwide. But now it also means menthol flavored cigarettes, rollies, vaping, e-cigarettes, water pipe and pipe tobacco, cigars, bidis, kreteks (clove ciggies, darling), heating tobacco, marijuana, crack, all the smokeless tobacco products (like chew and dip) and then all the inhaling of substances that actually dates back centuries. 

Smoking has always been for pleasure, or to cure pain. 

As detailed in Smoke: A Global History of Smoking (Sander L. Gilman and Zhou Xun), “humans have always smoked and probably always will.” But before we started tobacco smoking, we were smoking or inhaling all things hallucinogenic, dating back to as early as 5000 BC. Many of the ancient civilizations and tribes were doing a form of sweat lodge complete with incense mixed with psychoactive substances. Effectively smoking cocaine, weed or opium and getting high for medicinal purposes. In the Americas smoking was part of shamanistic rituals, and when the Europeans arrived in the 16th century, tobacco (“devil’s weed” as they called it then) started to be traded - which gave way to heinous slavery, of course - but the biggest spread came with the modernization of farm equipment following the reconstruction era. But long before this, and the opium dens we associate with China, the Ancient Greeks were already planting the seeds and then vaporizing and smoking opium. 

But now the research is actually starting to come out, like this study from The Johns Hopkins University, on vape ingredients (revealing thousands of chemical ingredients that are lurking - most of which are not yet identified). In the report Dr. Blaha also details that “nicotine is the primary agent in cigarettes and e-cigarettes and is highly addictive and toxic.” And that causes cravings (yup I remember those) and withdrawals (oh yes and those). He adds, “Nicotine raises your blood pressure and spikes your adrenaline, which increases your heart rate and the likelihood of having a heart attack.” 

So you’re thinking what I am thinking, right? We have the data and it shows us that smoking is terrible for you. But yet, people are doing it. And by the looks of it, they are doing it more than ever before. Trust me, I travel constantly and everywhere is smoking all over the planet.

And you’ve heard this little ditty - “Oh my grandma smoked two packs her whole life, and she died at 98.” Is this simply a case of a shark attack or a lightning striking someone, it’s so few and that’s why you hear about them…Somehow all of this is enough of a motivation for people to still smoke. But genes load the gun, and lifestyle pulls that trigger. Roulette all you want. 

But, kids will be kids, right? Remember when Trump tried to ban flavored e-cigarettes to stop the kids from smoking? Kids don’t care that smoking is bad, life feels long when you’re 16. And yes we have told everyone that smoking is bad for you, terrible for your health. Oh and that smell. And just think of your yellow gross teeth. Yes, we told everyone that. Doctors told you, the Surgeon General tried (they even printed the most revolting images of dead babies, bleeding necks and rotten mouths on the cigarette packs). But people don’t care. Because you may have told everyone it's bad for you. But you didn’t say it wasn’t cool. 

Smoking has always been part of what cool means. 

Think back to the 1950s when Bogart (swoon!) and James Dean would be lighting up. It was marketed as a luxury product that was just within your reach. Madison Avenue planned it like that. The Peggy Olsens of the Mad Men world specifically targeted you and your deep seated desire and insecurity to be part of the cool set. Light up and you’re a fucking star. As Geoffrey Mak (author of the book “Mean Boys” - with plenty of the mean boys smoking in it) told me over coffee recently, people smoke “because of some of the most enduring ad campaigns in America’s history.” Like Ronald Reagan “sending Chesterfields to all his friends,” of course the Marlboro man on a horse with the theme of “The Magnificent Seven,” The Flintstones even peddled cigarettes, Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet and smoking Camels. Also the multiple doctors in ads claiming it has health benefits. And then there was Virginia Slims with their “You’ve come a long way, baby” feminist statement in the 70s. Cigarette ads were everywhere - in print, on the radio, on billboards and even on television. 

Well on TV only until January 2, 1971 when the last cigarette brand ever advertised on TV aired during The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson - this after Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act. But, that didn’t make anyone put out their ciggies. Sweetie darling, Patsy and Eddie (from the TV show “Absolutely Fabulous”) brought cool AND humor to smoking - remember when Eddy popped pills and Patsy lit a whole pack of cigarettes in her mouth at once? Who wouldn’t want to do that? 

Plus the marketing of cigarettes has absolutely not stopped. And when you tell people via messaging and “cool” brand ambassadors that something is “tall, dark and handsome” as e-cig manufacturer Ploom said in their first marketing, the intrigue draws the moths right in…Marketers were always finding new target groups they could push their messages to, regardless of consequences. According to the American Lung Association, “Tobacco products are one of the most heavily marketed consumer products in the U.S. In 2021, the latest year for which information is available, the five largest cigarette manufacturers spent a total of $8.06 billion—or close to $23 million dollars a day—to promote and advertise their products.” The tobacco industry was one of the first to develop marketing materials specifically targeting Black communities (menthol flavored - speaking of which, pay attention to the Biden administration as they battle with tobacco lobbyists on how to permanently ban these) and also the LGBTQ community. For the gays they developed Project SCUM ("Subculture Urban Marketing"), a plan by RJ Reynolds, an American businessman and founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. in the mid-1990s to market their Red Kamel brand to gay men in San Francisco's Castro District. 

I was a model at 19 (no, nothing like that) and we smoked to suppress our appetites, some of my fellow models ate ice and cotton wool to “feel full.” But I just smoked. And yes I was waifed and thin, and puffing away like all the models did. We’d stand at castings smoking at each other, vying for the modeling jobs whilst in a cigarette stench pulling in our abs. And then there are the celebrities. Notably Dua Lipa, Lily-Rose Depp and Jenna Ortega. Red-pill Elon Musk smoking pot on the Joe Rogan podcast. Desperate. But for many toxic people that was hero behavior.  And you’ve seen the photos of Fidel Castro with his cigars right? Bad ass factor.  Or even the very sad photos of post break-up sad Ben Affleck. Melancholy factor.  Joan Crawford being a bitch with a cigarette between her fingers. Sass factor.  And then I actually saw Timothée Chalamet just the other day in Manhattan, puffing away. Erotic factor. 

In fact, it’s not just in the flesh, I am seeing it everywhere on screen: In the film “Maestro” the great Leonard Bernstein (played by Bradley Cooper) smokes whilst waiting at a doctor’s office. I switched on “The Bear” on Hulu and there are cigarettes everywhere. Watch “Survival of the Thickest” on Netflix and you’ll see, they’re smoking a lot of weed. I have to admit that I did particularly love the “get high, go for a run and then brunch” sequence. 

I mean Carrie Bradshaw was smoking and then secretly smoking whilst having an affair all over “Sex in the City”...her cigarettes became the sixth character (that is after New York, of course). And as perfectly said on a recent Saturday Night Live episode where the Weekend Update’s Colin Jost interviews a cigarette who says yes, he is cool and that “smoking makes you skinny and popular” (well he also calls himself "dessert for sex” and he isn’t wrong). 

I mean the world is going to end right? Climate change, the wars, post-COVID, that orange fascist with the terrible hair, someone or something is going to end it for all of us. I might as well smoke. It cools down the anxiety, man. The ultimate taboo, the rebellion, is naturally, to smoke. It’s bad for me, and it’s bad for everybody else. It’s a pure sign of the times. 

Remember the genius satirical film, “Thank You for Smoking”? (The screenplay is based on a novel by Christopher Buckley, son of William F.) It is about “Big Tobacco,” the culture of spin, lobbying (which is basically ruining the country) and how a Hollywood agent (played by Rob Lowe) is trying to get movie stars to smoke on screen again? Because according to him “only the villains and Europeans” are smoking on screen. And this is happening all over again, tobacco companies find other ways to market, corporate greed overrides doing the right thing. Every single time. God Bless America right? In the film, even the former “Marlboro Man” (played by Sam Elliott) is now dying of cancer and speaking out against smoking. But we still ride along…

As a New Yorker for the last fifteen years, I have noticed how people were shunning smokers, taking away smoking areas and yelling at the ones still puffing on the street. But post pandemic, whilst we lose all our graces and manners, I am now aware as I walk down streets and avenues there is always the smell of smoke - vomit inducing sweet vape flavors or deep dank marijuana scents. And everywhere I look I am seeing people tugging on something. And let me just tell you, when you shame people they dig in harder and blow smoke in your face.

They have tried everything including making smoking more expensive, banning smoking in certain places, the giant Public Service Announcements and various cessation programs. And then the dubious science they offered us about second hand smoke that wasn’t so well vetted, as reported in Slate in 2017. Saying all this, people don’t care. Remember when Obama told us how he sneaked a cigarette in the White House? People are still doing it. People are smoking, whether you think they should or not.

And maybe because you can vape discreetly and it disappears in a little puff of nothingness people feel more compelled to do it. Like the gentleman next to me in the middle of a flight from Europe back to the US. He didn’t care and when people complained pretended he’d done absolutely nothing. No cigarette smell to evict him from the flight. Or when I see waiters and staff at hotels across the country quietly slipping their hands to their mouths to take a little sip of vape from their candy colored pen…as they turn away from my table who would notice. 

Just the other night on a metro a bunch of youthful women were vaping right next to me. According to them if you inhale it for longer than five seconds the vape doesn’t come out and you cannot see it (I guess it stays inside your body). And they told me they (and everyone they know) do this at work, at home - because they don’t need to lean out the window or walk outside. The FDA ordered Juul to stop selling their e-cigarettes (but don’t worry they already have a new high-tech vape they are skirting by the authorities under a new name and a new company) but that doesn’t mean that Myle disposable pods or single-use e-cigarettes, like Puff Bars, aren’t available for purchase.   

Spend any time in Europe and you will notice the plethora of “heated cigarettes” absolutely everywhere (brought to you by Ploom and Pax - and if you see who is behind these company names you are about to get annoyed) and then you will hear people say they use these instead of cigarettes as they are “better for you” and have “less nicotine.” Roll your eyes with me. Seems like you can’t win this, no matter how you slice it. It's like sucking gasoline out of a car and swallowing it

I am of an age where I remember most bars being filled with smoke. Being able to go to a club and smoke on the dance floor. And then to go home with some boy (or boys) for playtime just to enjoy a post coital cigarette - isn’t that the ultimate fantasy that Hollywood sold us on? Cigarettes were never as cool and as sexy as that moment. But today I think people are smoking because they feel isolated and lonely and it gives them something to do, something slightly verboten that they can still do. 

So I quit long before the heated tobacco, or vape craze. I stopped cold turkey whilst living in Paris in my early twenties. I woke up one day and it repulsed me. No hypnosis needed. I didn’t even try Allen Carr's cult book “Easy Way To Stop Smoking.” I just stopped (Well, I am known to dabble just a tiny bit in the Dutch Berry once in a while). Smoking stopped being cool for me. And I read that Desi Arnez (Lucy and Desi were forever plugging Philip Morris) and James Baldwin died from lung cancer from their smoking habits. My health and wellness suddenly appealed more. And my skin started to look clearer, and people commented. And then the smell became an issue for me. Suddenly it bothered me. I don’t need to be transgressive. I’m good. I don’t need to fiddle with my hands, or to be cool. I feel better not smoking, and that’s really all that matters. Now, please light up in the tiny smoking area designated for your filthy habit. 

I leave the house and it’s hazy everywhere. I was recently the master of ceremonies at my sister’s wedding in the winelands of South Africa. A small elegant affair with just fifty guests. And out of the fifty, forty guests smoked. Yes, of course, this is all very anecdotal, but to me, this was new. I saw cigars, I saw vapes, I could smell weed and the ashtrays outside were overflowing. It was as if people were smoking in spite of us, I think, knowing very specifically that it's absolutely terrible for you. And here I had thought smartphones had replaced smoking, that impulse to have something in your hands…  

Maybe they were listening to Oscar Wilde who said in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - “You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”

What more exactly.