Let’s Take a Smoke Break? Understanding Why Tobacco is Interwoven in Queer Nightlife – and How to Celebrate the Joy of Breathing
Cigarettes and vapes are being lit up across queer nightlife spaces – influencing queer culture, aesthetics, and connection. In this Spotlight On, OUT Against Big Tobacco LA dives into the complicated relationship between tobacco and queer joy, grief, and belonging. We are asking:
- How can we honor the spaces that provide community support while protecting the bodies that carry us there?
And
- What does it really feel like to say no – not just to a cigarette but to a moment of shared intimacy in a community space?
Kaya Czyz, 22
Cisgender, Queer, Person with Disability
Growing up in an environment where openly identifying as LGBTQ+ was rare, I longed for the day I could move to Los Angeles. As a young, queer person. I craved community and I was especially eager to explore queer nightlife. Before turning 21, that looked like kickbacks and group hangouts. After, it meant queer bars and clubs. Queer nightlife intrigued me because it provided a way to go out and feel fully confident in my identity.
What I didn’t expect was the role tobacco would play in that world. Unlike going out with non-queer friends, queer nightlife often paused for smoke breaks. I couldn’t explain it then, but cigarettes and vapes seemed intertwined with queerness. Smoking wasn’t just common – it felt like a cultural marker. It was often framed as a tool of empowerment and a way to connect. While not explicitly stated, smoking had come to symbolize a piece of queer identity in LA.
As I began to explore queerness and community for the first time, smoking felt like a way to bond and fit in. Yet when I went for my first smoke break, I was confronted with another intersection of my identity: disability. Living with epilepsy and eczema, smoking impacts my life more than I would like to admit. If I smoked, I would be adding a seizure trigger I could have easily avoided. Just entering a smokey room could leave my skin dry, red, blotchy, and itchy from an eczema flare. Smoking was and is not an option for me because of my health, but not participating made me feel like I was missing out on a key part of queer connection in LA.
Still, that feeling of exclusion wasn’t something I was willing to accept without question. If smoking was seen as an entry point to the queer community, why had it taken on that role in the first place? Smoking and tobacco are not innately queer, so how did it infiltrate and embed itself in queer spaces so deeply?
As I talked with friends about why they started smoking, there was a cycle of responses. If they were the first to smoke, they started to escape exclusion. If they were not first, they started smoking because a friend did, to seek an escape, or to build community. In nearly every story, exclusion and desire for inclusion were underlying reasons to pick up smoking. Although many didn’t enjoy tobacco itself, they kept smoking – not just because it was had to quit, but because they couldn’t imagine what queer community would look like without it.
But the truth is queer community can and does exist without tobacco. We can experience more sustained queer joy and health with every tobacco-free breath. Would I have realized this without my intersecting identities as a disabled queer person or my interest in public health? I honestly don’t know. And that’s my point. Tobacco is entrenched not because it is a part of queerness but because it latched onto our experiences of exclusion, discrimination, and queerphobia all while sustaining a chokehold in our spaces. We can, should, and do exist as a beautiful community without tobacco; we need more tobacco prevention and conversations like this to breathe free enough to realize it.
Lu Lukah Orona, 23
Transmasc, Pansexual, Latine
When I was younger, I wasn’t bullied by my classmates or made to feel small by peers—it was done by their parents. They saw my transgender identity and the color of my skin and decided that was enough reason to treat me with disdain. Strangely enough, their children welcomed me and many were queer themselves. We bonded and created room for understanding, since our homes were not always safe spaces.
We carried unique burdens our cisgender and straight counterparts rarely faced. As trans and queer folx, we dealt with rejection, erasure, and the emotional weight of trying to exist authentically in a world that punished us for it. Depression and sadness were frequent visitors, but so was the deep longing for connection. This isolation brought us together, creating chosen families among my trans and queer friends.
Shunned by so many, we sought refuge in spaces where we didn’t have to explain ourselves — queer house parties, LGBTQ+ nightlife, scenes where the music was loud, the outfits unapologetic, and the energy? Magnetic. These were our places of freedom and joy.
But even in these spaces, I noticed a pattern. Nearly every safe space carried a cloud of smoke. Cigarettes and vapes were passed around like shared stories and hugs. Smoking became both a coping mechanism and a mirror of the trauma we had internalized in our bodies.
For many of my friends, smoking wasn’t just a habit — it was a response to pain. Tobacco was everywhere, passed from hand to hand. And as one of the few people who didn’t smoke, it felt strange to say no. It felt strange to reject something that had become part of our shared language of survival. Tobacco felt like the system’s signature on our pain – but I know we deserve much more.
I celebrate the joy of breathing by reminding myself that we deserve more than what’s handed to us (literally with cigarettes)– by our systems, by those who harm us, even sometimes by our own communities, and especially those who pretend to support us (looking at you, tobacco industry).
I celebrate by remembering that as a trans person of color, I, along with my chosen family, deserve a long, healthy, and prosperous life – without conditions of false acceptance. I find that possibility within myself and my beautiful community.
Living in my trans identity was something I had to learn to love despite the hate thrown at me. And I choose the honor that love—of self, of community—by refusing tobacco as my best bet toward survival and true acceptance. I celebrate my identity and my body not just by existing, but by protecting the breath that carries me forward. That, too, is resistance. That, too, is joy.
Jess Esquivel, 30
Cisgender, Pansexual, Latina
Thirty years seems like a lot of life – and it is, I don’t ever forget that. I consider the experiences I’ve had and realize how often the more questionable and even dangerous situations I’ve put myself in were almost always to feel a sense of belonging. My next statement, while painful to disclose, is accurate because our society deems it so, not because it is inherently true: queerness ostracizes us, especially in our younger years. I was never quite able to connect with most people because I didn’t share all the same thoughts nor the same desires. I couldn’t resonate with the heteronormative buzz around me and never really understood why. However, one place I looked forward to (especially having grown up in a rural town) was when we (non-queer folx and those who later turned out to be queer) collectively tried a new substance: drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and whatever other taboo product that was trending. I’m not sure if it is the rural-to-queer pipeline that catapulted me into urban spaces as soon as I could, but the change in scenario did nothing to alleviate that nostalgic longing for community – I wanted to find my people, and secondhand smoke wasn’t going to stop that.
Nightlife to queer folx is akin to access intimacy for disabled folx – defined by disability justice activist Mia Mingus (in 2011), access intimacy is about mutual understanding and ease of access between individuals with disabilities and their allies. Unlike emotional or physical intimacy, access intimacy focuses specifically on the ways in which people with disabilities navigate their environments and relationships. Access intimacy is built on trust, communication and a willingness to learn and adapt to the needs of others. For people with disabilities, access intimacy can contribute to a sense of autonomy and belonging by allowing them to fully participate in social, professional and recreational activities. Alas, a gentle reminder that folx may bear both intersectional identities and therefore makes spaces such as queer bars and clubs that much more safe, liberating, and powerful.
The most unfortunate reality in this magical escape we call a dance floor and yield access intimacy? Tobacco, nicotine, and smoke are the social laces that tie these experiences together, and I alone, cannot undo that reality. I can refrain from joining when asked, “let’s take a smoke break?” I can even pass on a hit when it’s my turn in the rotation, but the fact is that my peers are taking a smoke break.
Undoing the chokehold that tobacco has on queer nightlife spaces requires a deeply thoughtful, culturally competent, and community-rooted approach. Tobacco’s presence isn’t just about addiction—it’s tied to visibility, identity, trauma, resistance, and survival. Tackling it means replacing what tobacco has historically offered with care-centered alternatives that resonate with the queer experience. Ultimately, queer liberation requires bodily autonomy—and that means being able to breathe deeply, dance freely, and exist fully. With that, I remind myself to celebrate the joy of breathing by pausing when I need to, finding the language to refuse the products and substances I do not want to partake in, and letting my body lead, instead of allowing the baseless fears of rejection take over. I am loved by my community and will continue to find love in spaces that serve me.