From Cigs to Rollies to Vapes, Why has Having a Puff Remained Popular?

‘Pass me my vape/ I’m feeling sick/ I need to take a puff’ sings resident sad girl Lana Del Rey in Taco Drunk x VB, the trappy closer to her Grammy nominated ninth album Did You Know There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard. Her falsetto lulls with the flippant urgency of having to take a pause to satisfy nicotine withdrawals (which in distinctive moments interspersed within her discography you can actually hear). Del Rey’s penchant for vaping made headlines this past summer when she dropped her vape pen on stage mid-show and asked the crowd to help her find it. The evolution of Del Rey’s on stage tobacco consumption, from the grimy yet cinematic puff and smoke of Marlboro Reds to the Apple flavored vapor of Puff bars, is emblematic of the cultural shift around the perception of smoking as it pertains to gen z.

In a recent Substack essay Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek considers the contemporary view of smoking as an indefensible lethal addiction from a Lacanian perspective; juxtaposing the calculated indulgences of the ‘enlightened’ consumerist with the excessive hedonism of the “ignorant” addict. Writes Žižek: “Enjoyment is tolerated, solicited even, but on the condition that it doesn’t threaten our psychic or biological stability: chocolate yes, but fat free, coke yes, but diet, coffee yes, but without caffeine, beer yes, but without alcohol, mayonnaise yes, but without cholesterol, sex yes, but safe sex…” He argues that the one consumer good that cannot viably be repackaged to fulfill the prerequisites of ‘healthy’ enjoyment in its traditional form is the cigarette. In order to obscure the health risks associated with tobacco consumption, it has to be reinvented completely. 

Enter the era of the vape, a portable, electronic device that simulates the act of smoking through the inhalation of a vapourised liquid solution called e-liquid. Since their initial market launch in 2003 e-cigarettes have significantly risen in popularity, primarily among young people: as of May 2023 it is estimated that there are 82 million vapers worldwide. The prevalence of vapes can be partially chalked up to their purported harm reduction, as opposed to store bought smokes or hand rolled cigs. While most e-liquids contain traces of nicotine they claim to hold substantially fewer adverse health risks than their predecessors. A nicotine-free nicotine patch if you will; much in line with the moderated plaisirs of Žižek’s self-destruction-weary consumer. But there is a demographic that finds joy in the act of smoking regardless of electronic or manual means: teenagers.
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From the shoddily hand rolled fags of Skins in the 2010s to the neon pink vapor veils of Euphoria in the 2020s, smoking has been a recurring feature of authentic stories of coming of age; be it as a catalyst for an adolescent rite of passage or a dramatic signifier of teenage rebellion. Just this past year vlogger turned it-girl Emma Chamberlain admitted to struggling with a five year long nicotine addiction instigated by a habit of vaping when she moved to LA.

“The evolution of Del Rey’s on stage tobacco consumption, from the grimy yet cinematic puff and smoke of Marlboro Reds to the Apple flavored vapor of Puff bars, is emblematic of the cultural shift around the perception of smoking as it pertains to gen z.”

Beyond the performative cool of taking a drag, the practice of smoking has a distinctly gendered history. Riding on the coattails of first-wave feminism in the early 1920s cigarettes were marketed as an emancipatory tool to women under the tagline ‘Torches of Freedom’. Spearheaded by public relations pioneer – and Sigmund Freud’s nephew – Edward Barnays, the nationwide advertising campaign sought to subvert the social taboo around female public smoking and reclaim the phallic cigarette as a feminist symbol of defiance. Ultimately resulting in an uptake in women smokers. More than a century later the predilection of girls online to intellectualize smoking as a radical act of dissociative feminism echoes the ill-judgment of their suffragette sisters.

It would be unfair to discuss the continued adoration of billowing out smoke without bringing up the JUUL. At the height of its popularity, JUUL’s sleek USB-like design could be spotted in the hands of every celebrity and influencer you could imagine - as documented by the now inactive Instagram account @celebritieswhojuul, the vape precursor to the curated cool of @cigfluencers. Once the most popular e-cig on the market, JUUL was designed as a cigarette alternative to help smokers quit without having to deal with the withdrawal symptoms of going cold turkey yet the company’s mission statement was quickly sidelined for youth marketing. In June of 2022, following a two year long investigation, the FDA ruled against JUUL’s appeal to stay on the market. Despite the murky downfall of the most famous vape, JUUL’s lasting legacy has been its imbuing of vaping with an impervious sense of cool aligned with that emitted by traditional cigarettes. 

Whether it be the existentialist impuissance induced by doomscrolling or the meta ironic aestheticisation of life under late-stage capitalism of #corecore, we seem to be easing ourselves into reluctantly accepting the inevitability of a lost future with each new addition to the online lexicon. The cigarette then is a fitting companion to this overarching feeling of impending doom. Going back to Žižek’s dichotomy of the modern consumer vs. the oblivious epicure, it seems to me that the cultural comeback of the cigarette alongside the popularity of the vape as a self-deprecating marker of cool by way of Fleabag reaction gifs is a clearcut testimony to Gen Z’s embrace of unabashed debauchery in the face of dissociation. In other words: if armageddon is inescapable, you might as well light up and gratify your desire for a semblance of agency.  

Words: Elif Türkan Erisik