Today, Explained - Is smoking back?

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

Gen Z is making smoking — or at least posing with cigarettes — cool again. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Noel King. Smoking two cigarettes at once in Washington Square Park in New York City. Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, I'm going to be honest about something. I smoke sometimes. I know I shouldn't. It's a disgusting habit. It will kill me. But on occasion, when life gets stressful, and right now, life is a little stressful. I am not alone. If you've been paying attention,

it feels like cigarettes are everywhere all of a sudden. Sabrina Carpenter was posed with a cigarette for interview magazine. Chapel Rhone did a sort of sig-in-the-wig when she did her tiny desk performance. Though it looks like it's all my hair, it's a wig. We also had Lady Gaga referencing smoking and posing with a cigarette when she did her. So today we will be asking, is smoking back? Coming up on Today Explained from Vox. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom.

And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports. And mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Does anyone really know what goes on behind closed doors at the Supreme Court? Four years ago, I got a tip about the court. And I was not in the market to cover it whatsoever.

But this tip was about a secret influence campaign that had been carried out inside the court. As you know, the very idea of that is outrageous. I'm Preet Barrara, and this week, New York Times investigative journalist Jody Cantor joins me to discuss her expose on the court's shadow docket. The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, cigarettes and... Today explained. Man, that's a combination.

Can't beat it. We're really like the... Today explained. And cigarettes generation, when you think about it. So I am Marnie Rose McFaul and I am a US news reporter for Newsweek. What do you cover? I cover between sort of culture, specifically the online zeitgeist, internet trends, social media and US politics and current affairs. Okay, so if you're covering zeitgeisty stuff, you must be fairly young.

How old are you? I'm 26. 26. So that is firmly Gen Z, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm two years. The cutoff is 97, so I'm 99. In your role as Newsweek's Gen Zy zeitgeist correspondent, you wrote a piece about how smoking is cool again among members of your generation.

Really? What? Make the case. Tell us what's going on. Gen Z's fascination with smoking is really anchored in the way that Gen Z do things, which is it's much more about how it looks than actually practicing it. I think one of my favorite pieces of data in how Gen Z is having this like pushing this smoking revival. is a piece of research from the fashion data account style analytics, where they've reported that in 2024-20205, searches for the term smoking pose were up by 70% on Pinterest. We are seeing this huge revival in online spaces where smoking is suddenly everywhere again.

And if you look at the, even if you compare this to like the 2010s, like sort of your big pop stars today, like Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Rhone, they're posing with cigarettes, which we couldn't really picture like Taylor Swift ever doing. I think part of the smoking revival, I would really attribute it to Charlie XX and the Brat era. So that's kind of harking back to 2024,

which is a little while ago now. But I think that's really where this fascination began. And Charlie XX, unlike Sabrina Carpenter, is a celebrity who's seen smoking. There's a very iconic image of her at her wedding to the 1975's George Daniel, where she's sitting in front of two electronic bikes in East London smoking a cigarette. Matty was actually asking me this. When we came back from Ibiza, he was like,

are you actually partying, like, as much as it looks like you are? Or is it all a bit of a like? And I was like, no, like we are. And beyond in sort of music, we're also seeing this pop up a lot in television. And subsequently on TikTok edits, which is mostly where Gen Z will be consuming TV anyway. But smoking's really prominent in all of the biggest TV shows, right?

whether that's love story. Be honest, I don't think marriage is necessary. But I'm down to do it. Heated rivalry. Oh, I'm not sure you're supposed to smoke here. Or even a television show like The Pit. You need something or you're just here to ruin one of the few things. It still brings me a little joy in life.

We're seeing smoking pop up fairly prominently in all of those shows. We also have it in movies as well. A study from Truth Initiatives found that in 80% of the Oscar nominated films for Best Picture in 2025, there was tobacco-related imagery. Are people in your social circles actually smoking more? Yeah, people in my social circles definitely smoke more. I've even noticed a shift in that from kind of university to young adult life, and maybe that's a testament to the stress of it.

I think there's something about the COVID lockdown era that maybe push people towards smoking, but both in terms of an emotional response and that it's something to do in a situation that was intensely very stressful, but also because smoking really pushed people outside in their socialising. Everyone had to do that sort of social distanced socialising in the park, which I think really brought cigarettes back into the fold in a way in terms of like a social setting. And then you sort of also, COVID's really associated with that boom in wellness in a lot of ways. Everyone was in their bedrooms with their yoga mats doing their sort of ab workouts or their yoga or their Pilates. And I think there is a real rise in smoking in terms of a response to

the sort of matcha and pilates of it all. A phrase I see coming up on, am I allowed to swear? Probably not. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So a phrase I see constantly on my TikTok and on my Instagram at the moment is no, I don't want to go and get a fucking matre. And those. that phrase always comes alongside someone smoking a cigarette. I'm not the friend to go get a macho with. I want a dirty martini, extra dirty, I want a side of hookah, and I want some calamari rings. This just tastes like unhappiness.

This tastes like I'm very unhappy right now. Why does beer taste so good after freshly withs match? And yeah, I want to go all healthy and shit before saying fuck it and open and a cold one. I'm also seeing a lot of like healthy dinners. with a text overlay of this, but also spoken. So I'm having my cucumber and my sardines, but I'm also having a marlborough light.

So I think there is that kind of maybe nihilistic sense with the kind of response to wellness of being like, okay, well, we've been doing this wellness thing, we were engaging in this wellness thing around the terms of COVID. We've all been prioritising our healths and things don't necessarily feel that great at the moment in terms of the world. So it feels like a kind of a natural response of like,

I think it was the cut that just ran an editorial titled, I mean, why shouldn't we all smoke cigarettes again? With each passing day of this absolutely deranged year, my desire to contemplate how to make sense of it all while puffing on a cigarette grows. But it's interesting in terms of government intervention because governments are doing really everything they can to stop smoking. The UK has just made it so anyone born after 2008

will never be able to buy cigarettes in a shop. The British Parliament passed a bill proposing the toughest anti-smoking measures in the world. It is a landmark bill, my lords. It will create a smoke-free generation. Some younger Britons say the government is overstepping. It's my body. If I want to smoke, I can smoke.

So we have this sort of government intervention in terms of whether it's taxes or whether it's being like, no, you at this age, you're never going to be able to smoke, is really clamping down on it. And presumably, with that kind of legislation, other countries are likely to eventually follow suit. I wonder about the social aspects of smoking. Like you mentioned that during COVID people picked it up again.

I certainly experienced that. One of the things was that I remember, you're standing around outside. You have to be outside if you want to talk to people. You're on edge. You're looking for something to do with your hands. And it just feels very natural. And then, and we all know this viscerally, then it becomes a habit. Then it becomes, oh, those are my friends that go outside and smoke during, you know,

lunch break or after the show. What have you learned in your reporting about smoking as like a social activity? Something that's very well known about Gen Z now is that they're quite isolated as a generation. It's very like on the phone. Gen Z's like aren't going out and they're really struggling to meet people and make friends. And that comes into play with dating as well. And there's this real moment of fatigue with Gen Z's and dating apps being like, well, we don't want to do this. We want to do something else. And I think smoking really comes into play in terms of meeting people naturally there because it is a very natural conversation starter. But smoking a cigarette is kind of hits. It helps you get outside. It helps you make friends

because you're going to be like, hey, do you have an extra sig? And most of the time, people say yes. Look at Gen Z, boy. Sitting on the floor in the smoking area. Never. It's something that I've seen playing out online in terms of even people that don't smoke might carry a lighter with them. So if someone needs a lighter at the bar, they can spark up a conversation. and just that smokers, they talk to each other, which a lot of people now don't do. They're not inclined to do that. But you're much more likely to, in a pub garden or outside the bar on the street, as everyone loves to do in London, sort of sitting on the curb with a drink in their hand

and a cigarette in the other. You talk to people, which you probably don't do if you're inside of a bar in the same way, and you definitely don't do if you're in a reform of Pilate studio. But it would be funny if you tried. So to this point, we have been strictly vibes-based in this conversation. What does the data actually say about whether people are smoking more? So the data doesn't show that they're smoking more. Okay.

Which is interesting and kind of feeds into this theory of it really being a pop culture thing rather than an actual thing. The most recent data I've been able to find is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. and that is that in 2024, nearly 1 in 20 adults in the United States aged between 18 and 24 had used cigarettes in 2022. But that figure was almost three times higher for those aged 25 to 44. So that's showing that young people aren't smoking in the same way that the older generations are. And the general data is showing that there is a sort of decline in smoking and that this government intervention and the longstanding research and the push from the governments to show that smoking. isn't healthy has worked, but there is that dissonance with the pop cultural fascination. This is very interesting. It makes me wonder the people that you spoke to about smoking,

do they acknowledge the health risks? Do they say, like, we know this is bad? I don't think there's an idea that smoking is not bad for you among any circles. That's definitely not something that I have seen or have found in my reporting. I think there's a real universal acknowledgement that it's terrible for you. I think the more in, interesting point of conversation there is probably, well, everything is terrible for you. So why not this? Do you smoke? I do smoke.

Do you smoke all the time? I know, I would say I'm a sporadic smoker. I'm a sort of occasional social smoker. I'm a one-a-day smoker at the moment, but I've already had two today. Well, it's on theme. Marnie Rose-Mall across the zeitgeist for Newsweek. Don't smoke, folks. Coming up, cigarettes are bad, but nicotine.

Nickotine, believe it or not, absent the cigarettes, is having a moment. Support for the show comes from Quince, of course. You might be looking to update your wardrobe, not because you don't like the way you dress, but the fact that you want pieces that feel easy, comfortable and still put together. That's where Quince comes in.

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today at checkout. That's joined delete me.com slash today code today. This is today explained. I'm Sarah Todd and I'm a reporter at stat. I cover topics like food and tobacco and other ways that private businesses shape our health. All right. So in the first half of the show, we talked about how Gen Z likes smoking, or at least Gen Z likes posing. with cigarettes. You have been reporting on how nicotine is in fashion with right-wing wellness influencers. What's going on? Yeah. And it's not just right-wing, although it certainly includes right-wing wellness influencers, but health and wellness influencers broadly are getting interested in nicotine as a way to boost energy or focus or help them with work or their workouts.

Nicotine is actually like pretty close to a true utropic, which means it elevates your ability to think clearly and stay focused on all that stuff. If you have long COVID, you should be using nicotine to beat it. If you get acute COVID, nothing is better than nicotine. You think nicotine helps your erection? Yeah. So that's a really interesting development that we are seeing. Okay, so here I knee-jerk want to say that can't possibly be healthy. It can't possibly be healthy, but you're going to tell me I'm getting something wrong.

To be clear, nicotine is highly addictive. However, it is not what causes cancer. In cigarettes, what causes cancer is the fact that it's combustible. You're lighting it up. You're inhaling it into your lungs, and you're in the process ingesting 70 different carcinogens. So what the wellness influencers are using are things like nicotine pouches and patches. these may have their own health risks, but they're not the same as cigarettes. So a couple of the really prominent people in there are people like podcaster Joe Rogan.

I think there's real benefit to nicotine because that's been proven for a long time. The Stanford neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman. Nicotine increases motivation. It decreases negative feelings of mood. It increases positive feelings of mood. And then the biohacker Dave Asprey, who, is the guy behind Bulletproof Coffee? What if there is a molecule that could turn your mind back on without frying your nervous

system? That's what nicotine offers. But Big Pharma won't tell you this because nicotine, as a molecule, is a direct threat to pharmaceutical profits. And what are they using it for exactly? So it varies a bit depending on who we're talking about. But a lot of them like to dabble with it as a way they say that it really helps give them a boost when it comes to their focus and their energy levels. And that makes sense because nicotine does flood your brain with dopamine when you take a hit of it. So that's what they're feeling. Limit your use, use it strategically, and for longevity and for cognitive function, and even to mimic exercise. It's a misunderstood molecule with a massive upside for biohacking and longevity. So they're saying it helps them focus,

which means this is about, maybe no surprise, but this is about productivity, not like the the sublime pleasure of taking a puff on a cigarette. Right, yeah. And that's a kind of interesting distinction. You know, the way that cigarettes were historically marketed, a lot of it was about relaxation, leisure. Time out for many men of medicine usually means just long enough to enjoy a cigarette. Reward yourself with a pleasure of smooth smoking. Smoke longer and finer and milder pell-mell.

The way that these newer nicotine pouches are being marketed among the, the health and wellness set is that it's much more about getting through your exercise, getting through your workday, that kind of thing. Huh. So nicotine helps you focus to get through your gym set. Well, that's what they say. Now, the research on this is more complicated. And I can go into that if now is a good time to talk about that.

Yeah. Let's talk about what the research actually says. What does the research say? So for my story, I talked to a guy named Paul Newhouse, who's a researcher. at Vanderbilt University. And he's somebody who, a lot of the people who are really into nicotine as a sort of wellness tool or performance tool, like to cite his research. But he says, basically, nicotine can be helpful for you cognitively if you're suffering from some sort of problem to begin with. So, for example, it's possible that if you're dealing with dementia, nicotine patches

in particular could help you focus. But he says, it's very hard for nicotine to improve your focus. or attention, if you're functioning at peak performance, you won't improve. In fact, you'll get worse. It all depends on where you are at the present time. Okay. So as with a lot of things, it might seem good, but then the research digs a little bit deeper, and it's not all that good. Is it dangerous, though? So this is a really good question. We know, as we mentioned earlier, that nicotine is highly addictive. And there's a concern about young people and non-smoker. in particular starting to use nicotine if they don't already and how that could lead them down a path toward potentially more dangerous habits, such as cigarettes as well. Then the research on

nicotine itself, we know that it can increase your blood pressure and therefore your risk of potentially heart disease. We know that with young people, it can have an impact on the way that your brain develops. However, there isn't a ton of long-term research into oral nicotine pouches, and that's something that the American Heart Association, among other organizations, has called for more research to be done so that we can get a good sense of exactly what the risks are. Okay, so some of these folks are maha adjacent, or you might think they're maha curious. How does nicotine use square with the larger maha push, you know, things like get the microplastics out of our food, get the pesticides out of our food, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, it's an interesting question because, you know, some of these nicotine pouches do contain microplastics, for example. And that's something that would be a contradiction, right? But it does square with the Make America Healthy Again movement in that it's sort of like counterintuitive. So I'd put it along the same lines as, you know, saturated fat is good or drinking maro milk is good. It's kind of reaching into sort of edgy ideas that people might also find pleasure in as well. Yeah. So that makes me wonder, like, there are other things you can do to focus and get you through a gym set. Caffeine is an obvious one, right? Why did nicotine become the go-to? Like, what spurred all this interest in something

that, again, because of the association with cigarettes, we've often thought of as like a bad thing. I think part of it probably is on the part of the companies. They spotted a marketing opportunity. One person I profiled as part of this story is Jason Wynn. He's a co-founder of a brand called Athletic Nicotine. What's Athleticin? So, yeah. we're a low-dose, slow-release, tobacco-free nicotine, really engineered for a performance tool. And he's a former college quarterback and Iron Man competitor, and it's low-dose nicotine pouches, meaning they come in, I think, one milligram and three milligram versus then you'll typically see maybe like six milligrams and up. So the idea is you get like just a tiny hit of nicotine.

It's enough to help you really get through your weightlifting or help you through your bike ride. need to create a brand that aligns with that lifestyle and not to be ashamed of using it. If you sit down with a cup of coffee and you could throw the can out on the table, it's like, no, you don't have to be ashamed of that, right? Part of it is people are always trying to think about, like, what's a new different, trendy way that we can market our products? The tobacco industry, of course, has a long history of figuring out different niches that they can market too.

So I think that's part of it. These are the early stages of a marketing effort. Are you seeing that lots of people are starting to take nicotine in like pouch form or patch form? I would say yes with an asterisk, which is that, you know, this is still pretty early. So we're not necessarily capturing all of the data. For example, so the most recent youth tobacco use survey showed that it was about half a million of middle and high school students using nicotine patches. That is not a small number, but it's also 2% of high school students. And then anecdotally, for example, I talked to one Stanford professor who said, well, based on what I see walking around campus, I think they're much more popular than that. So I think we're still trying to get an accurate grasp on the data.

The Trump administration, of course, has aligned itself with RFK, which means aligning itself with the Maha movement, which makes me question whether the messaging on nicotine has changed at all during the second Trump administration with Robert Kennedy in the position that he's in. Yeah, well, RFK himself has been spotted using what appear to be nicotine pouches. It's been reported alternatively that he's using Alps, which are Tucker Carlson's brand. American lip pillow. Some people have said it Zinn. Maybe he uses both. That's a little unclear. But he does seem to be a fan of nicotine. He's also made some statements about how nicotine pouches are presumably safer than cigarettes. The nicotine pouches are probably the safest way to consume nicotine.

I think that what gets public health experts hackles up is that they worry that it's sort of a slippery slope toward actively endorsing these types of products. With that in mind that nicotine really exists along a harm spectrum with cigarettes as being clearly the most hazardous nicotine patches and nicotine gum that are used for helping people quit cigarettes, There's a lot of good evidence suggesting that these are really helpful and low risk. Oral nicotine patches, the data so far, suggests that it sits somewhere in the middle. That said, it's sort of a question, I think, of why would you introduce a new health risk if you don't have to, right? As you mentioned, there are a lot of other ways that people can boost their energy, boost their productivity.

It's understandable that people are looking for ways to do that and are sort of modern, an obsession with productivity. But I think that it always befits audiences to kind of think about who's trying to make me think that nicotine is good for me and what might their underlying motivations be. That was Stats, Sarah Todd. Miles Bryan produced today's show. Amina El Sadi edited and helped procure Zinn. David Tadishore and Bridger Dunnigan engineered.

And Gabriel Donatov is our fact checker. The rest of the team includes Hadi Mwagdi, Peter Balanon, Rosen, Dream Daddy. Patrick Boyd, Danielle Hewitt, Kelly Wessinger, Ariana Espudu, Dustin DeSoto, and lightweight Sean Ramos firm. Our supervising team is Avishar Artsy and Jolie Myers. Our EP is Miranda Kennedy. We use music by Breakmaster's Cylinder. I'm Noelle King. Today explained is distributed by WNYC.

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