Executive Briefing
Is smoking really back?
Sorry to disappoint. Plus: The Quince growth chart revealed, and seven years (!) of The New Consumer.
By Dan Frommer on Thursday, March 26, 2026 at 10:30 am
“Cigarettes are back!” the New York Post has declared.
“From trays filled with cigarettes at the Vanity Fair Oscar’s Party to Kylie Jenner smoking on the mag’s latest cover,” Allison Lax wrote last week, “…smoking is well and truly back — Surgeon General’s warnings be damned.”
This has been coming up more in conversation: After all that wellness posturing, are young people really smoking?!
On a mass scale, no.
In mid-2025, 11% of Americans said they had smoked a cigarette in the past week, tied for the lowest percentage ever, and down by nearly half from a decade ago, according to Gallup, which has been conducting this survey for more than 80 years. That percentage has been in decline since the 1950s. And while it moves a little year to year, the overall trendline is that fewer people are smoking, not more.
The smoking rate is even lower among young Americans, both in comparison to young people in the past and to older consumers today, according to Gallup’s polling.
In 2024, Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones wrote that “Over the past three years, an average of 6% of adults under age 30 say they have smoked cigarettes in the past week, compared with 35% of young adults in 2001 through 2003 surveys.”
“Young adults are now less likely than other age groups to smoke cigarettes, as 13% of those between the ages of 30 and 49, 18% of those aged 50 to 64 and 9% of those 65 and older say they smoke.” (Young adults are more likely to vape than smoke.)
What about actual cigarette sales numbers? Those, too, continue to decline, as fewer people smoke and as higher taxes continue to make cigarettes more expensive.
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Hi, I’m Dan Frommer and this is The New Consumer, a publication about how and why people spend their time and money.
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