Cigarettes and Popular Media
There is many a psychological need for a cigarette in the movies. The bashful hero lights a cigarette, the better to gain a hold of himself in this trying interview with his future father-in-law. The villain smokes hasty puffs to hide his nervousness or to ease his conscience. (Brandt 86)
From the late 1930s through the 1940s, two out of three top adult movie stars advertised cigarettes while also smoking on screen. In one year alone, tobacco companies agreed to pay stars at least $3.3 million (in today’s dollars) to endorse cigarettes. They also paid to have cigarettes featured in films into the 90's.
How the tobacco industry built its relationship with Hollywood BMJ Tobacco Control https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/11/suppl_1/i81.citation-tools
Effect of seeing tobacco use in films on trying smoking among adolescents BMJ 2001; 323 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.323.7326.1394 (Published 15 December 2001)Cite this as: BMJ 2001;323:1394
Between use of popular media, and advertising that reinforced people's desires, cigarettes became embedded in the public imagination. How cigarettes came to be viewed as a way to express personal values can be seen in interviews run by the cigarette industry themselves.
Recently researchers have reported an increase of smoking in popular streaming content. The report While You Were Streaming: Tobacco Use Sees a Renormalization in On-Demand Digital Content, Diluting Progress in Broadcast & Theaters found that 79% of the highest rated shows for people aged 15-24 contained incidents of smoking, sometimes in prominent characters.