Brands carved out personalities (glamorous, rebellious, rugged etc) and then invited smokers to find themselves in the image
Some malfunction way before that
In 2010, the Food and Drug Administration was granted sweeping powers by Congress to regulate the tobacco industry, which manifested in [severe restrictions] on the way the industry can advertise and sell cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products, especially marketing efforts designed to appeal to children and teenagers. 20 The dangers of smoking are well understood and documented, but as far back as 1987, a writer in The New York Times lamented that despite [the] overwhelming evidence, 53 million Americans smoked 570 billion cigarettes a year, enough to make the cigarette business in the United States a formidable force
The WHO emphasizes that smokers hand-to-mouth behavior and smoke-induced lung diseases may increase their susceptibility to COVID-19 (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020)
One study estimated that on a humid day and virtually every summer day in North Carolina is humid a tobacco worker can be exposed to the nicotine equivalent of thirty-six cigarettes