From the resurgence of low-rise jeans to a newfound love for digital cameras, Gen Z is reviving several iconic trends from the early 2000s.

Among these nostalgic revivals is one trend many thought was long gone: smoking cigarettes.

Recent studies indicate that the decline in smoking rates across the UK has stalled, with some areas even seeing an uptick in smokers.

In fact, the number of young people taking up smoking has reached its highest level in ten years.

This renewed interest in smoking, despite its role in causing 80,000 deaths annually in the UK, has been fueled significantly by the influence of young celebrities who openly enjoy tobacco.

These famous figures have managed to transform smoking from a once frowned-upon habit into an activity perceived as chic and alluring.

These include Charli XCX who was pictured outside her wedding reception at a trendy Hackney restaurant with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of orange wine in the other opposite her husband – the 1975 drummer George Daniel – who was also smoking.

And last year the pop star was behind the viral Brat Summer trend among Gen Z – inspired by her no.1 album of the same name – which Charli said could be personified by a ‘pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra’.    

For many years now smoking has been taboo, helped in part by an intense anti-smoking campaign. But now, the revived prevalence of smoking in pop culture appears to be having an impact on impressionable young people.

One survey from Haypp – a company that sells tobacco free nicotine products – revealed that a large number of Brits under 35 had not only noticed more photos of celebrities smoking but they also thought it was back in fashion.

They found that 36 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds though it was cool and 49 per cent of people aged 25 to 34.

And on whether they thought smoking was cool, while only 17 per cent 16 to 24-year-olds answered yes, this rose to 38 per cent among 25 to 34-years-old with just 4 per cent of those over 55 answering yes.

 Smoking in England has estimated that the number of young people smoking tobacco products has now risen to around 24 per cent – the highest rate in a decade.

Hazel Cheeseman, the Chief Executive of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH, told the Daily Mail that Gen Z’s nostalgia for the 1990s and 2000s coupled with the ‘cultural cachet’ of smoking could be behind young people’s renewed interest in cigarettes.

She said: ‘Smoking has been part of western culture for 100 years it’s part of our DNA and that was thanks to the tobacco industry who positioned their products within cinema, advertising and the music industry which made it seem very glamorous. 

‘And that plays into the 1990s and early 2000s revival we’re seeing today because smoking and cigarette brands could be promoted in a way they just can’t do it any more.  

‘So celebrities like Charli XCX and other celebrities who are kind of positioning themselves within that kind of aesthetic where smoking feels part of that.

‘This isn’t just a ‘Brat Summer’ there are consequences to smoking it’s a highly addictive product and, while you might feel invisible in your 20s, smoking can lead to health problems such as COPD, cancer and heart disease not that many decades down the line.’ 

Charli XCX is not the not the only celeb who is an avid smoker. Fellow pop star Dua Lipa was pictured lighting up on multiple occasions including in a photo she shared last summer which showed the One Kiss hitmaker posing with a cig in her hand while on holiday in Majorca.

Sabrina Carpenter was also seen lighting up in her recent video for no.1 UK single Manchild.   

And Hollywood heartthrob Paul Mescal admitted he refused to give up smoking during training for his starring role in Gladiator 2.

‘I was petrified that they were going to take away everything, like drinking and I smoke. Everything fun,’ the actor said in October 2024.

The 29-year-old was then pictured at Glastonbury with his beloved vice next to his pop star girlfriend Gracie Abram who herself had a cigarette hanging from her lips.

Ms Cheeseman continued: ‘Smoking continues to hold a cultural cachet for young adults just as it did when I was a teenager in the 90s. 

‘It’s important for governments to not allow smoking to feel glamorous and less harmful than it really is because that can be something that resonates with young people.’ 

‘Young people are less likely to identify that smoking causes a range of diseases than older people because I think they have been less exposed to some of this sort of hard hitting information about the consequences of smoking. Instead they sort of know in an abstract way that it’s bad for you.’

She added: ‘I think people don’t really have a kind of a really visceral understanding of that, particularly not when they’re younger, and obviously when you’re in your late teens and early 20s, you are invincible. 

‘So you know, though, you really need to land those hard hitting health messages in order to kind of puncture that sense of invincibility that young people just inherently have.’

Away from pop culture there is another unlikely factor that could be pushing young adults back towards cigarettes – vapes.

E-cigarettes have grown massively in popularity in recent years and ONS data released earlier in the year revealed for the first time that the number of vapers was now higher than the number of smokers. 

But with its popularity has come a growing concern about the long term health effects of vaping.

While the NHS still insists vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking, harrowing stories of 17-year-olds developing so-called popcorn lungs – a rare type of lung disease, triggered by inflammation in the airways which become scarred – has spooked many Gen Z vapers.

ASH shared a survey which revealed a surprising shift in the perceptions of harm of vaping compared to cigarettes. 

It showed that 53 per cent of those asked said vapes are more or equally as harmful as cigarettes compared to 29 per cent who said vapes are less harmful.

This represented a remarkable shift from six years earlier where 48 per cent said e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes compared to 22 per cent who said they were more.

For Hamish, a 25-year-old who works in the City of London, his concerns about the health effects of vaping were a major factor in why he decided to take up cigarette smoking again.

He said: ‘I’ve smoked for four years. I started as a social smoker but this gradually turned into a daily habit due to the stress from my graduate job. I’ve tried to kick smoking but I’ve found work makes it hard.

‘I then switched from smoking to vaping but as I became more aware of studies which suggest vaping was potentially worse for you. So I started smoking tobacco again about six months ago.

‘I was concerned that the higher nicotine content in vapes was leading me to consume more nicotine than I was when I was smoking cigarettes.

‘And I think there’s certainly a growing stigma around vapes being seen as quite childish with their bright colours and sweet flavours. Nothing worse than being a tall bearded man smoking a watermelon vape to make you feel self conscious!’  

Hamish added that he had definitely noticed more young people picking up smoking recently which he believed was due to the health risks of smoking becoming more apparent and a ‘growing stigma’ around vaping. 

Ms Cheesman said: ‘It’s deeply unfortunate that public narrative means that people very much wrongly believe that vaping is as harmful as smoking, or even more harmful it categorically is not. 

‘The weight of evidence has grown over time and it’s not right to say that we don’t have evidence. We do have evidence that vaping is much less harmful than smoking and, if it is a choice between vaping and smoking, it is hard to think of any scenario where it wouldn’t be safer to vape.’

Dr Marina Murphy is Senior Director of Scientific Affairs at Haypp Group, she told the Mail that overemphasis on the dangers of vaping in schools and in the media was having an impact on young people. 

She said: ‘I think, is that, because there’s been so much noise around vaping, and so much misinformation around vaping. 

‘I have a teenager myself, and I know that in schools, they talk about vaping all the time. They don’t talk about smoking. Because I do think that there is an assumption, a wrong assumption, that nobody smokes, that teenagers won’t be interested in smoking, and that they’re not likely to smoke, so they focus almost exclusively on vaping and what they see as the potential harms of vaping.

‘I do think, that is contributing to a rise in smoking.’ 

Dr Murphy continued: ‘On the NHS there is very clear, very understandable information around vaping and nicotine.  

‘Vaping and smoking are completely different. So if you’re if you’re smoking, you’re lighting something, it’s like lighting the fire and sticking your head in it 60 times a day for 30 years.

‘There’s tar, carbon monoxide, and 7000 chemicals in smoke, and at least 70 of those are known to be carcinogenic, so they’re known to cause cancer.’

In order to curb a further rise in smoking, Ms Cheeseman said the government needs to make they don’t ‘take their foot off the pedal’ and let progress ‘stall’.

She said:  ‘We can see when we are doing all the right things at the same time, when you’re  increasing the price of tobacco, communicating things through TV and providing the right support to smokers it does fall.

‘And, broadly, it is falling at the moment, but you can see that when we don’t do that, it stagnates. But what you don’t want to happen is say a country takes their foot off the pedal and let progress stall. Smoking rates will go back up again’. 

She warned of the risks of stalling progress: ‘The number of smokers can start to go back up again. It’s a highly addictive product that is being always innovatively and cleverly marketed by companies that still make unbelievable amounts of profit in the UK.’ 

Ms Cheeseman has praised the government’s smoke free generation law which will make it illegal to ever sell a cigarette to a person born after January 1 2009, but claimed that more needed to be done to show young people the risks of smoking.

‘Recent governments have been far less forthright in their anti-smoking campaigns which were a great tool for communicating the harms of smoking in the 2000s and early 2010s,’ she said. 

‘Now we’ve had a period where we’ve had far less of that, even though the government has committed to restarting some of those campaigns, we’re yet to really see it materialise. 

‘And these are the measures that really matter in terms of making sure that people understand that there are consequences to smoking cigarettes.’

A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson told the Daily Mail: ‘Smoking kills. That’s why we’re bringing in a landmark law to stop today’s teenagers and every generation after them from ever getting hooked on nicotine.

‘Vapes can help adults quit smoking, but they are not for kids. We’ve already banned disposable vapes and we’re now restricting flavours, display and packaging that are luring young people in.

‘Any shops that flout the rules will face tough new penalties.’