As a lifelong non-smoker I reached the age of 13 back in 1990 (30 years ago) and from then onwards it seemed as if smoking rates were on the increase, despite the health risks already being well-known by then, and even awareness of risks concerning passive smoking was already a thing by then, but it seemed that most people didn't give a damn, and more teenagers and young people seemed to be taking up the habit than ever before during the most part of that decade (apart from me, of course). It really used to cause me great discomfort and inadvertently anxiety having to be in the thick of it all back then, almost always with no choice. Even many non-smokers, although obviously disapproving of the habit in the grand scheme of things seemed a lot more blasé about it all, particularly when letting visitors who smoked light up in their houses, vehicles, etc, and I even recall some fully-grown adults who had previously never touched any tobacco products in their entire lives suddenly started to smoke, typically citing stress as the foremost reason for doing so.

I often wonder if the economic crisis of 1990-93 was one of the major factors for the seemingly sudden upturn in smoking rates during the first half of said decade?
Perhaps it could have also been the 'keeping up with the Jones's' thing, especially being the norm in pubs, clubs, restaurants, etc, and still even many workplaces.

When we had the last major economic crisis in this country in 2008-11, I don't recall any upward trends in smoking rates, though of course (for better or worse), smoking had been outlawed in pretty much all indoor environments and workplaces since July 2007, coupled with increasingly tighter restrictions being able to purchase tobacco products ever since, which probably helped.

Did anyone else on here think that smoking (counting only conventional tobacco products and not illicit drugs, etc) seemed disproportionately prevalent during the decade of the nineties, and possibly why?

Don't get me wrong, this thread is in no way intended as an out-and-out bash at smokers in general, as I am sure the vast majority of them nowadays indulge in their habit appropriately and responsibly when and where it is still permissible.