The Decibel - Is smoking making a comeback?

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Smoking cigarettes is cool again. Apparently. Social media and accounts online are raving about the habit, turning it into a trend with images from celebrities and appealing to Gen Z. But this rebirth in popularity runs counter to widespread anti-smoking campaigns warning about the dangers of getting addicted and the health effects of cigarettes. Where did this cultural resurgence for smoking and vaping come from?  Dr. Robert Schwartz is a senior scientist at the Centre for Mental Health and Addictions and the executive director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit. His research focuses on public health policy and tobacco control. He’ll talk about smoking rates in Canada and how a pop culture trend may be obscuring the real threat.  Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's a term blowing up with a certain segment of Gen Z online. Sigfluencer. A sigfluencer, in few words, is a hot person making smoking look cool. Yes, apparently smoking cigarettes is back. You know, my friends and I, you know, we kept saying to each other, oh, cigarettes are so cool, they're so cool. It's like there's this idea that something so self-destructive can be seen as a positive in a weird way. Jared Oviot runs an Instagram account that is a couple.

collection of images and videos of celebrities smoking in public. Like Canadian actor Hudson Williams and his heated rivalry co-star, Connor Story, as well as musicians Charlie XCX and Clero. The account is appropriately named, you guessed it, Sig Fluencers. And it has over 100,000 followers. There's this idea that everything seems to be going downhill and becoming increasingly digitized so everyone is living their life on on a computer through their phone, and cigarettes are almost like a physical manifestation of

touching grass, trying to get back in touch with a time where things weren't so online. And it's not just celebrities taking part. Gen Z has flocked to social media to show off their new aesthetic hobby. This might be a surprise after years of work trying to get people to stop smoking. So what's going on? Are cigarettes really back? And if they are, what does that mean for health policy that tries to stop young people from getting addicted to nicotine and tobacco in the first place? Today, we have Dr. Robert Schwartz on the show.

He's a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on public health policy and tobacco control. He's also the executive director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit. He'll tell us what's been going on with smoking rates among Canadian youth and how focusing on cigarettes alone might be missing the real three. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Professor Schwartz. Thank you so much for joining me today.

My pleasure. So we've seen something online that's been happening, this kind of renewed fascination with cigarettes, especially within the Gen Z population. So I actually sent you a link to your email that I would like you to open up, and I want to get your reaction to this Instagram account. Okay. What are you seeing? I've seen photos of people smoking.

all kinds of celebrities, young people, people dressed in different ways, stars, yes. So this is an account called Sigfluensers. What do you make of, first off, an Instagram account basically just dedicated to these influencers that are smoking cigarettes? And what do you make of this trend more generally? I find it shocking. I find it surprising. I haven't seen this, but I'm not a big social media guy.

I'm a huge skeptic having been fighting against the tobacco industry for over 20 years now. So it makes me think, how much money are these people receiving directly or indirectly in some way from the tobacco industry? Because it's hard for me to imagine that anything like this would happen without the tobacco industry pushing it. That is so interesting. Let's talk about what's actually going on in terms of the numbers and whether people are actually smoking more. What do the current rates of smoking look like in Canada? Yeah, so, you know, the actual official statistics that are published by the government of Canada do not show an increase in the use of cigarettes or other tobacco products. But they are old, 2003, 2004 at best.

And they are samples. And I do not at all dismiss this kind of evidence that comes from looking at some. social media posts and may come from observation that individuals have, you know, the signs and the actual statistics can actually be behind, you know, what is happening and they may not pick it up. So, no, the official statistics do not show an increase in cigarette smoking, not by adults, and not by young people. The rates of cigarette smoking have been in decline for a long time. There was a fairly quick, rapid decline over a few years that ended two or three years ago and is now somewhat plateaued. But the data that we see from the surveys shows that right now

for adults, cigarette smoking is at about 13%. For adults, the rates of vaping e-cigarettes are at about 10%. Okay, so that's Canada-wide. Let's zoom into the youth numbers specifically. What have rates looked like for them recently? So for youth and, you know, different surveys make different cuts, but I'm going to give you 15 to 24 years old. Cigarette smoking past 30 days is 14%. And vaping for the past 30 days is 28%. Wow, that's really high. It sure is. So as you mentioned before, that, you know, it's possible the data is lagging, and we might not be capturing this current moment that we're seeing right now.

It's possible. Yeah, I would be very surprised if we saw a huge change in the proportion of educating adults or youth. But as I said, scientists and statisticians can be behind the time. And do we know if young people now, so that's the 15 to 24 age group, are they smoking less than previous generations? Yes, they are. We do see, as I said, a pretty constant decline over time. The previous generation definitely had higher smoking prevalence rates.

You talked a bit about vaping there. Let's get into that a little bit more when it comes to youth and vaping. Why are the numbers so high there? Do we have a sense? Well, it's a really cool thing to do. And when the government first legalized e-cigarettes with nicotine in 2018, they allowed all kinds of promotion. And even though the government has tightened that type of thing, they train left the station.

And young people are really attracted to this. It is sort of what cigarettes were two generations ago. People get a nicotine rush because nicotine is so addictive. A lot of young people who try it once say, oh, that was good. Let's try it again and again. And it does not take so very long before they're addicted. to eat cigarettes. Okay, so that's e-cigarettes. And something I've also been hearing about is nicotine pouches like Zinn. So do we have any numbers on young people using those?

We have some preliminary numbers on nicotine pouches. I don't have a good national estimate, but we do have in Ontario from 2025, which says that young people in grade 7 through 12, past year use is 5.8%. So that, wow, okay. That is not. a small number considering how new these things are, and considering that you're talking about young kids who shouldn't be able to access these substances legally at all. And it's important to say that these are young people, the vast majority of whom would never have become cigarette smokers. Right. And maybe just to describe what these pouches are. So basically, they're like these small pouches that you put into your mouth near your teeth by your gums,

right? And then that releases the nicotine, which gives you kind of a rush. Yes. And it gets you addicted very quickly and already the oral health professionals of the dentists and their colleagues are very unhappy, but people putting these things into their mouths. Yeah, this is interesting. So on one hand, we're seeing on social media, at least, like the rise of cigarettes. And then at the same time, there's these other products, right, like the vapes and Zin pouches that are very popular amongst young people. Yeah, I mean, the industry, you know, is very smart. They understand that the chances of them are dictating a huge number of people in the young generations of today is very low, right? Because it's no longer, I mean, despite your sick fluencerous social media, it is no longer considered cool to smoke cigarettes. It is considered cool to vape e-cigarettes. That's why we're seeing this huge increase because the tobacco industry understands that they can't push cigarettes too much to American and Canadian young people, they're not going to get them addicted to their deathly products in that way.

So addict them to nicotine in other ways. And that's why they pushed e-cigarettes so hard. And now they have nicotine pouches, which, you know, ostensibly are even less harmful. I want to bring it back to Jared, who runs this Sigflencer account. So I know you're saying that cigarettes aren't as cool amongst young people. But again, we are seeing this trend, at least on social media. And something he brought up was the quote-unquote drunk cig, or this casual cigarette. I think if you talk to a lot of Gen Zs, especially Gen Zs that are smoking for the first time in the last few years, the way that they're using cigarettes in general isn't really from a pure addictive standpoint. They're not chain smoking every day. They're not buying a new pack every week. It's choosing to

have one when you go out. It's one, you know, on your birthday. It's like there's very particular times when they're allowing themselves to have, quote-unquote, cigarettes that don't count. So, Professor Schwartz, I'm wondering if this is actually true. Does casual smoking not count? There is no such thing as a cigarette that doesn't count. So the science is very clear on this. I thought you would say that. I thought you would say that. Even if you're smoking very few cigarettes, you are still at risk of all of the potential harms of smoking cigarettes. Not only that, many people are prone to becoming very quickly addicted to the nicotine that's in the cigarettes. And that's the problem. Yeah, that's a really good point to remember and to emphasize

there. And I think also it's probably important to remind people of the health impacts because I think we all know them, but let's remind people of what the impacts are of smoking. Oh, gosh, how much How do we have? I'll do it briefly. So people generally, you know, associate lung cancer with smoking cigarettes. Most cancers that people are familiar with are affected by cigarette smoking. But then we go to respiratory diseases, COPD, asthma, and of course, coronary disease. So heart attacks, stroke are all strongly associated with cigarette smoking. But cigarette smoking can be a causal factor of diabetes. And finally, which I should have started with because it's one that people don't think about

so much. Addiction itself is a really important mental health disease. And people who are addicted means that they're not able to carry on with their normal course of life without having their access to that substance, in this case, nicotine. What about vaping? Because when vapes were first popularized, there was this idea that they were kind of a healthier alternative. Also hearing this about the nicotine pouches as well. Is it true that they are less harmful than actual cigarettes? Yeah, probably and almost certainly less harmful, but what does it

mean to be less harmful than the product that is the most harmful consumer product that we allow to be sold still? You know, cigarettes will kill a huge proportion of people who use them. They'll make them sick. So it doesn't mean a whole lot to me to say that they're less harmful than cigarettes. The question is how much less harmful are they? However, if I am asked personally by a person who smokes cigarettes, should I completely switch to vaping e-cigarettes? I would say yes, absolutely. It's very likely that your risks of health effects are much lower and stop vaping those e-cigarettes as soon as you possibly can because that's the only way you're really going to minimize or get rid of that risk. What are the health risks of using e-cigarettes?

Well, I'll start with addiction because we ended with that on cigarettes. So depending on what e-cigarettes you're using and what concentration of nicotine and how you use it, e-cerics can actually have much more nicotine than cigarettes. In addition, we don't have conclusive evidence about coronary disease, about respiratory disease, about cancer or about diabetes. we do have preliminary evidence that is quite suggestive that there are respiratory symptoms that we see. So coughing and wheezing, for example, are higher amongst people who vape than amongst people who do not vape e-cigarettes and people who vape nicotine. The heart rate goes up when you're vaping.

And, you know, people who vape a lot, you know, that is not a healthy thing for their coronary future. What about nicotine pouches? Do we know anything about the effects of that? Very little so far. That will emerge within a year, two years, five years. But everything I say about addiction applies to nicotine pouches. Again, it depends on how you use them, how often you use them, what concentration of nicotine pouchers you're using. The legal limits in Canada are fairly low. But there's from what we understand anecdotally and through the public health units in Ontario and the people who inspect go into convenience stores and see the illicit market, you can get stuff that's a very high nicotine concentration. We'll be right back. Professor Schwartz, what do we know about what influences young people to smoke? Do we have any sense of that?

So seeing smoking in movies, so seeing movie stars smoking cigarettes is the single most important cause young people started to smoke. Wow. If you go to a movie, your favorite actor or actress is smoking, it looks so cool. Why wouldn't you give it a try? And not only that, but in previous generations, it was the cool kids who started to smoke. And so there's a lot of peer pressure, but smoking in movies really did it. And we also know from studies that were done at the time that the tobacco industry paid

the entertainment industry to have spots where people are smoking in movies. And is that still happening? I can't say, we don't know. It's interesting to learn that movies have such an impact on young people and how cool it looks, I guess. Yeah, people are surprised always by that finding. But that's why it's scary for me to see the photos that you show me from the sequence of Instagram account because this is the kind of thing that can have a difference. Vaping of e-cigarettes is all over TikTok and other social media platforms.

And the public health community has tried to counter that with using social media postings of their own. But it's an inkling. And the industry had something like 90% of the space on social media and public health had something like 10% of the space. And social media is just, it's there all the time. It's in the young person's hand. They're looking at it hours per day. It's hitting them in the face. They don't have to pay to go to a movie.

Get to a movie theater, pay for the ticket and sit there for two hours to be exposed to it. So bringing it back to Jared again, who runs a SIG fluencer account, he talked about this idea around hotness and its impact on smoking's appeal. You know, as we thought more about it and I thought more about it, is smoking only cool if you're hot? which felt like a novel idea at the time, I guess, but it really spun into starting the account because, you know, I wanted to take a deeper look at that. And, you know, I was starting to see celebrities, especially someone like Duolipa, for example, smoking on Instagram. And I thought maybe there's something here. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think for sure. You know, it often in the past have been depicted in movies by really good-looking movie stars,

not exclusively, but also for young people, you know, they see their image. And, you know, they see their images, you know, they see their self-image as sort of copying or emulating the movie stars. So they want to be good looking. They think the cigarette might add to that image. I can see that. But, you know, often in movies, it's also the villain smoking. And believe it or not, that actually appeals to some as well. The villains are not usually depicted as hot.

Okay. So there's this kind of romanticization or glamorizing cigarettes. online. But what about other generations? Do we have an idea of what Canadians think about smoking more broadly? Like, there was a time recently when it was definitely seen as a gross habit. People were ashamed of it. People were hiding in the shadows. But yeah, what is, what's going on in Canada? Like, how do Canadians see smoking? The social acceptability of smoking is really very low, except in certain, you know, subgroup. you know, we're smoking still is the thing to do.

Let's talk about anti-smoking policies and campaigns. In Canada, we have those big graphic warning labels on cigarette packs. I mean, each individual cigarette now has a warning on it. There's ad bands, of course. You can't smoke indoors in public places or you're on patios anymore for a long time now. Are these helpful? Like, what exactly works to lower smoking and vaping rates, particularly when it comes to younger james?

generations. Well, each of those things has contributed to the decrease in the prevalence of cigarette smoking that we've seen over time. When I came into this area of study in 2005, the prevalence of cigarette smoking was at about 20%. Now, we're down to somewhere about 13%. Then if you go back even further, you know, go back to the 1960s, you had 40, up to 50% of people smoking cigarettes. And so we've made great progress over time. But it's taken way too long. And each of these tobacco control policies, or as you call them, anti-smoking policies, has contributed to that. You didn't mention one, which is taxation of cigarettes, increasing the price, which is, as far as we understand, from the scientific evidence, the most effective

way to decrease both the uptake of smoking by young people and to, and to, and to, and, you know, and encouraging people who smoke cigarettes to stop smoking. One of the more recent ones is the labels on the health warnings on individual cigarettes. And we expect that will have an effect, but it's not going to be huge. Recently in the UK, they announced that they will be implementing a generational ban on smoking. So that's basically anyone born after December 31st, 2008, would not be allowed to buy cigarettes ever, and they're going to gradually increase the legal purchase age. Is this something that could be considered in Canada?

I would certainly hope so. And from what we understand, the Minister of Health has said that it's being looked into. But certainly this is a very welcome model development. It will gradually have an effect on the use of tobacco by young people. Because we know from American experience in particular, if you raise even the legal age of purchasing cigarettes to 21, that actually has a fairly substantial effect on the uptick of smoking cigarettes by young people. It is not going to decrease the prevalence of tobacco use very substantially in a very quick

period of time, because it is craziness in my mind that we've known about most of the health effects of cigarettes and enough of them. Since the 1960s, we've known these things, and still 13% of Canadians are smoking cigarettes, and still some 5% of young people are using tobacco, and 28% of young people using e-cigarettes, this is not okay. This is a failure of government to protect the public from this really toxic substance. I appreciate your passion and I think is a really good message. And I mean, something I was grappling with when we were talking about this earlier, which is like, it seems as though there is a societal appeal to nicotine or tobacco.

And it has taken many forms throughout the years, as we've talked about, vaping now, Zin pouches, obviously cigarettes. I just, I wonder, does that mean that your, or fighting a losing battle? Are people always going to find a way to use these products despite the harmful effects? We're not going to get rid of these substances altogether. I'm not calling for prohibition, but for those people really need to use them. We need a way to find a way to make them available to those small number of people while keeping everybody else protected while not exposing young vulnerable people to the product when we know

that it's going to addict them. And they're being exposed before they have full capacity to understand what it is that they're getting into. In an ideal world, then, what would fix this problem to you? Well, I think the government has to really step in strong, decide that within a five or seven-year period, they're going to take drastic measures to actually really reduce the prevalence of cigarette smoking. So I'm talking about cigarette smoking right now, knock it over nicotine use through vaping or nicotine pouches. Leave that available for a bit so that those who can switch from cigarette smoking can pick that up.

And it'll help them stop quickly. And bring the prevalence of cigarette smoking down to certainly less than 5% and hopefully down to less than 3%. Restrict where it can be sold. Take the profit motive of it, but gradually reduce the huge profit that the tobacco industry reaps. from these by increasing the cost of the tobacco industry. The polluter should pay, and the polluter here ain't paying. Professor Schwartz, I think that's a good point to end on. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. That was Dr. Robert Schwartz, a public health policy and tobacco control researcher, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. This episode was produced by our associate producer and academic intern, Cynthia Jimenez. Ali Graham mixed this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Mihal Stein.

Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chong is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.