This week, I felt it was appropriate to write an article about my column’s namesake: smoking. Smoking has permeated our culture to the core, and has now turned fruity and called itself vaping. But allow me to take a step back into the delightful haze of smoky times gone by:
Long before the era of mindfulness, healthfulness and other invasively modern ways in which we now remind ourselves to stay alive, there existed three people in the world of “health”: living, dead, and in progress of either. The world back then was a less active one, and while life expectancies were admittedly shorter, people were less preoccupied with understanding things such as pre workout, push and pull days, and the nebulous pseudoscience known as self-care. In the modern age, there exists a fourth party: the undecided. That delightful midway point between active living and active dying. Those of us that find ourselves here would like to remain alive as much as possible, but are averse to the embarrassing vanity of a workout routine and who fall victim to various unhealthy choices. A sin of note among the undecided is that coolest of vices: smoking.
To be clear, I do not endorse smoking of any kind, though in good conscience, I cannot damn it either. Smoking exists as a legal form of self-harm and gratification, and the most prolific smoking group is those who should want nothing to do with it.
Before the Truth Campaign was informing children of the dangers of smoking, there was the D.A.R.E program, which sought to educate on the harms of all substance abuses. D.A.R.E was a laughable example of corporate messaging, directed at cool teens, which eventually grew into an useless fossil of the 1990’s, remembered only in name by the Goodwill t-shirts emblazoned with its red letters, now being sold on Depop for offensive prices. Before both the childishness Truth or D.A.R.E, were the lavish commercials of yester-millenia advertising the joys of smoking directly to young children. Some members of previous generations, many of whom have yet to enter their sixties, can still remember advertisements featuring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble espousing their love of Winston cigarettes. Today these vintage ads can be found humorous or frightening, depending on how seriously you choose to live life. Either way, these ads remind us of how glamorous, intentional, and trendy cigarette smoking used to be seen.
As a child of the 21st century, I saw different ads about smoking; those which were decidedly damning of the sport, and many which were actually highly effective. Teen smoking had been on the decline for years if not decades by the time I entered high school in 2016, just around the time vaping, a cheerfully dangerous invention, was popularized. From my recollection, cigarette smoking was something my demographic hadn’t even considered: we were too well-educated on the subject to start doing it and we were too busy refilling JUUL pods to consider buying a pack.
By my sophomore year of high school, something changed that was not unique to my New Jersey town. While Truth, D.A.R.E. and all the concerned adults had their backs turned while looking at smoking, vaping had snuck up on everyone. The bane of the high school bathroom stall, or rather that of those seeking to use one for its intended purpose, had firmly gripped our generation, by employing a brand-new, villainous method of conversion: delicious flavors. Such delightful tastes as burnt sugar feigning the title of “Creme Brulee,” and the most notoriously sweet, a flavor referred to only in name as Mango, graced the taste buds of millions of unsuspecting high school sophomores who would hardly know the future impact of their hedonistic choices. These choices have stayed with them through college, even if they’ve swapped the JUUL for the Flair. Though, young people will differentiate themselves from true grizzled addicts by uttering something no junkie has ever dared say: “I can stop whenever I want.”
More pervasive and harmful than the invention of the JUUL is the invention of social media which has, to the dismay of many a Truth campaigner, been much more effective in restarting young peoples’ love for the sweet smoky sin. TikTok, Tumblr, and Instagram have aestheticized something now long-known to be harmful, and just as Gen Z fell victim to the ploys of sweet taste, they fell victim to the ploys of good looks. It is the unpaid job of the young person to look cool, and the Gospel of Social Media tells us that smoking is, in fact, cool once more.
Regardless of the reason, teens and young adults are smoking cigarettes again, and for the most delightfully dim-witted of reasons. Activists and anti-smoking campaigns taught us well about the dangers of smoking. We know it’s bad for us, they accomplished what they set out to do. Our generation started smoking again because no amount of activism can make teenagers not want to look cool; they underestimated the power of teenage groupthink. Our parents’ generation was told by their favorite cartoons that smoking was pleasurable, in other words, their smoking was inevitable, they didn’t know any better. We didn’t start smoking because we didn’t know any better, we started smoking because we did know better. The concept of smoking has run the gamut of cool to uncool, and has glamorously returned to the former. In the words of Iris Apfel:
“If you stick around long enough, everything comes back.” A modern adjustment would state if you stick around long enough, teens will find you cool again, but only if at first you taste like candy.
Teenagers know about protected sex, yet there are still teen pregnancies; teenagers know not to text and drive, yet it’s a leading cause of teen deaths; we know about the dangers of smoking, but we smoke anyway. Teens now know smoking kills, but it’s also evocative of a chic, alternative, metropolitan aesthetic. Apparently death does discriminate, but only against the uncool.
All of this is to say that smoking is not a cool thing, just as Gen Z believed themselves to be a bastion of civil rights activists for a month in 2020, we have a similar level of disillusionment about our own mortality. This kind of plucky naivety is admirable for some young upstarts, but not that admirable. Remember, we will get older. We will age, and those of us who decide to smoke will probably start that process sooner than later. Unless you are that rare breed that takes active pleasure in smoking, the activity usually takes and rarely gives. Smoking makes you look sexy, mysterious and gives your fingertips the smell of a Manhattan sidewalk. If these things are desirable to you, then you’re welcome to join the elite club of successful and famous smokers, though it’s likely the only thing you’ll have in common is the name of your specialist.
One last piece of advice: for those young people unsure about their future career path, I offer some much sought after advice that adults will seldom give you when preparing for your future. Your parents may say that it’s up to you, do what you love and the money will come. I implore you to ignore such lazy sentiments, reread the above text, and become a pulmonary doctor immediately. In 30 years, you’ll thank me, and through the robotic voice of an iron lung, Gen Z will thank you.
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The Smoking Section is where I observe the world at large, and put a magnifying glass on a subject we all hold dear to our hearts. As a member of Gen Z, I think it’s important that we take a step back and remember that life is not that serious, and no topic is too good to ridicule. In the Smoking Section, we take a step outside of the party for a breath of less-fresh air. Here if you don’t have anything nice to say, pull up a chair next to me.
@schmidtconrad
