What is everyone talking about this week: (Whisper it) is smoking back?

Listen to the media (not me, mind) and you’d be forgiven for thinking that young people are a bunch of mopes, who refuse to drink, go dancing or have sex and are ruining British nightlife for all. Rejoice, then, for the tide is turning. A recent book by Norwegian sociologist Willy Pedersen argues that binge drinking in one’s youth can improve career prospects. People have taken note: The Hart in Marylebone, is rammed every night.

Although there’s something to be said for correlation over causation — those who can afford a £7 pint have likely had a leg up in other parts of life — this hasn’t stopped columnists from extolling the virtues of hard living. ‘My generation,’ wrote former British Vogue editor Alexandra Schulman in the Mail on Sunday recently, ‘drank our way to the top.’ With pride, I daresay.

They smoked, too — several packs a day. To the chagrin of doctors, nurses and vape lobbyists, the habit is back with a vengeance. Riding the success of her culture-lassoing album, West End Girl, Lily Allen graced the runway last month for 16Arlington sporting a glamorous Holly Golightly-style dress and the ultimate style accessory: a Vogue.

Even in the USA, where smoking has long drawn more scrutiny, teenagers addicted to vapes are now using cigarettes to wean themselves off: harder to puff secretly on a Marlboro in the back of a classroom than on a watermelon-flavoured pen that emits next to no scent. In Britain, the average pack is now priced at an eye-watering £16.50, meaning cigarettes have become a status symbol. Accordingly, smoking’s uptick in the past few years has been most noticeable among middle-class women under 45.

The surrounding paraphernalia is having a moment, too. Country pubs are dishing out more matchboxes than ever and tobacco has become one of the most popular notes in perfumes and reed diffusers. Cigarettes have even started appearing on menus in the form of patisserie. At Cliveden House in Berkshire, guest chef Richard Picard-Edwards recently introduced a chocolate and cinnamon pudding in the shape of a cigar; and over at The Yellow Bittern bespoke caterers Presto London lately dished up a box of ‘chocolate cigarettes’, which they deemed ‘great for children’.

Despite the moral dubiousness involved in glamourising something so unhealthy, there’s a strange comfort in knowing people are going out and socialising over smokes. Anxiety and loneliness, after all, are known to shorten lifespan as much as tobacco. As Julie Burchill once wrote in the wake of Danniella Westbrook’s nasal misadventures: ‘You’re going to die, so you might as well live.’