A smoking fetish, also known as capnolagnia, is arousal at the sight or a fantasy of someone smoking, or less commonly, of the fetishist smoking themselves. A smoking fetish may fixate on the smoking of tobacco, cannabis, cigars, hookahs, pipes or some combination of the above.
Reviewed by Kinkly Staff on November 8, 2022
A 2003 analysis of content promoting smoking culture and lifestyle online took note of smoking fetishes. It noted that much of the content promoting a smoking culture online included sexy women smoking. It also summarized the fetish as having a focus on "lighting up, inhaling, exhaling, dangling or holding a cigarette."
The fetish got some attention in 1996 when smoking pornography was covered in a Wall Street Journal article. As a result, more niche sites and communities sprung up around this interest.
The attraction to smoking as a fetish is relatively harmless, but smoking itself is known to cause cancer, heart disease, stroke and a number of other serious health conditions.
There is little to no clinical or empirical research on smoking fetishes.
For the smoking fetishist, the act of smoking assumes a sexual connotation. A cigarette is phallic, and a lot of smoking porn centers on the mouth, whether it's taking a drag from a cigarette, or seductively exhaling smoke.
In the media, smoking has long been portrayed as sexy. This portrayal was the result of deliberate marketing efforts by tobacco companies over many decades. Partly as a result of this, many people who smoke also smoke after sex, which could also help to further solidify this sexy association. In addition, the 7,000+ chemicals in a cigarette cause the body to release dopamine, serotonin and endorphins. It has been suggested that this combination may actually out the sexual pleasure of an orgasm.
Because smoking is seen as socially unacceptable, it is sometimes viewed as a provocative act, so some theorize that the taboo around smoking is part of its appeal as well.
Smoking fetish has a significant presence in pornography, which suggests that while this sexual interest isn't well studied, it isn't that rare. Although smoking porn can be as explicit as any pornography, a lot of it favors suggestive and semi-nude photos and videos of attractive women simply smoking, which suggests how powerful the act of smoking itself is in these fetishists' arousal.
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