The 1990s are firmly back in style. From bucket hats to Britpop playlists, the last decade of the 20th century is being celebrated across social media and pop culture. But alongside the harmless nostalgia, a far more unwelcome trend has been revived: the glamorisation of smoking.
Recent headlines have highlighted how smoking is creeping back into the spotlight, particularly through influencers and celebrities with massive youth followings. Charli XCX, for example, whose music and aesthetic shaped the “brat summer” trend, described the vibe as “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter, and a strappy white top with no bra.” At New York Fashion week last year, models strutted down the catwalk smoking cigarettes. There’s even an Instagram account dedicated to showing pictures of high profile, attractive celebrities smoking. This normalisation of smoking risks re-igniting a harmful cultural association between cigarettes and coolness, to which young people are particularly vulnerable.
History repeating itself?
The 1990s were characterised by a troubling rise in teenage smoking rates (12% of 11-15 year olds self-reported as regular smokers),1 fuelled by relentless tobacco brand advertising, sports sponsorships, giveaways,2 and pervasive media depictions of smoking as a symbol of rebellion and sophistication.
Today, smoking rates have declined considerably among young people thanks to a wave of highly effective public health policies over the past 20 years, including the introduction of standard packaging, bans on the display of tobacco products, and the totemic ban on smoking indoors. In 2023, just 3% of 11-15 year olds were current smokers.3 But this still equates to around 100 000 children,3 and every day around 350 young people start smoking.4 This is why the government is introducing highly welcome and groundbreaking new legislation to incrementally raise the age of sale of tobacco, so that it can’t be sold to anyone born from 2009 onwards.
Do portrayals of smoking in the media and social media threaten to undo this progress and undermine the effects of new legislation? Research has consistently shown that media depictions of smoking influence young people, shaping their attitudes towards smoking and their cigarette use.56 This effect is dose related, so the greater the exposure, the greater the risk of a young person taking up smoking.7 What’s more, the effect is independent from how smoking is portrayed—it’s irrelevant whether smoking is condoned, encouraged, glamorised, or not.
Not a harmless trend
Unlike other popular ’90s trends, smoking is not a harmless throwback. It’s a deadly addiction. Smoking is still the leading cause of premature illness and death in the UK and is responsible for half the difference in healthy life expectancy between the country’s richest and poorest people.8910 Tobacco is a uniquely lethal product; it’s the cause of death for up to two thirds of lifelong smokers,11 and around 160 people are estimated to receive diagnoses of cancer caused by smoking every day in the UK.12 A recent article in the Sydney Herald noted that two of the films celebrated at the 2024 Oscars (Maestro and Oppenheimer) focused on historical figures known to be heavy smokers—but neither film features the less palatable fact that smoking is likely to have played a part in the illnesses that led to the deaths of both Leonard Bernstein and Robert Oppenheimer.131415
Tobacco smoke also leaves its mark on appearance. Studies have confirmed that smoking is a major contributor to premature facial wrinkling and accelerated ageing.1617 This is a message that’s generally missing from glossy depictions of attractive stars with cigarettes.
Where does accountability for this worrying trend lie? Should public health considerations influence artistic licence? Clearly, there’s a difference between the media publishing images of celebrities or influencers being caught smoking and creatives making a conscious decision to depict smoking in a film or other media format. Regulators like Ofcom (for television and on-demand video) and the British Board of Film Classification (for films and video games) should have a crucial role in protecting young people from media influences that could encourage smoking. Their guidelines provide limited protection for children by stipulating that smoking should not be shown in children’s TV programmes and requiring film classifications to take into account how smoking is depicted, but these regulations require strengthening.
These rules are also hopelessly out of touch when considering the vast and wide ranging ways that children (particularly teenagers) consume media, including a swathe of user created content that has little or no regulation governing it. Social media platforms are profiting from serving up this harmful content, while taking little or no responsibility for the harm it’s perpetuating. Popular culture has the power to influence behaviour—and with that power comes responsibility. In the absence of any current workable controls around social media content, it’s up to platforms, influencers, creators, and artists of all kinds to push back against the normalisation of an addiction that is anything but glamorous and to take responsibility for the message they are sending.
In addition, the government has a key role to play in raising public awareness. Mass media campaigns that depicted the harms of smoking and sent a clear message about how smoking robs people of years and quality of life were a regular part of the media landscape in the 1990s but have declined in recent years. Total funding for anti-smoking campaigns has been cut by over 95% in real terms in the past 12 years, from £23.3m in 2008-09 to around £1.32m in 2020-21.18 Re-investment in mass media campaigns—with a focus on the social media channels used by young people—could help redress the balance and undermine the creeping glamorisation of smoking.
If the 1990s are back in fashion, let’s not repeat the mistakes of that decade. Smoking may look glamorous in curated photoshoots or carefully edited music videos, but its consequences are devastating and lifelong.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: None declared.
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Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.
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AI use: Author used AI to suggest subheadings for the article.
