The Evolution of Vaping in Movies & TV Shows

First Appearances on Screen

Johnny Depp introduced mainstream audiences to vaping in The Tourist back in 2010. His character Frank Tupelo used an electronic cigarette in a train compartment between Venice and Paris. He told Angelina Jolie’s character Elise that the device wasn’t a real cigarette. Frank explained it delivered nicotine but produced water vapor instead of smoke. The prop looked like a first-generation cigalike with an LED tip.

Three years later, Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood vaped in House of Cards. Netflix viewers saw him use a pen-style vaporizer in the White House residence and office. The show treated vaping as a discrete smoking alternative. Frank’s vaping habit became part of his character’s controlled, modern persona.

Props Department Choices and Device Variations

Productions select different vaping devices based on character development and visual requirements. The Tourist used first-generation cigalikes with LED tips while House of Cards featured pen-style vaporizers for Frank Underwood’s office scenes. Baby Driver’s production team chose baby-pink e-cigarettes to match character aesthetics.

Modern productions incorporate pod systems, disposable vapes, and delta 9 vapes alongside traditional e-cigarettes and pen-style devices. Drive Hard showed characters maintaining tube mods on screen. True Detective Season 2 used standard vaporizers for Rachel McAdams’s character. These prop selections range from basic cigalikes to colored disposables to advanced personal vaporizers, each serving specific visual and narrative purposes.

Commercial Integration and Early Claims

Cymbeline became controversial in 2014. Entertainment coverage reported that Milla Jovovich’s e-cigarette scenes involved paid product placement by a Canadian e-cigarette company. This claim appeared in multiple industry sources discussing commercial integration in films.

John Cusack’s character in Drive Hard spent screen time cleaning and preparing his vaporizer. The 2014 film showed vaping as routine character business. Coverage summaries noted producers wanted to enhance vaping awareness through these scenes.

Tracking Screen Time Patterns

Vaping remained nearly absent from screens between 2007 and 2010. E-cigarettes had entered consumer markets but hadn’t reached film sets yet. Adult thrillers and dramas featured the first instances.

From 2011 to 2014, premium streaming services and films started including vaping. Characters used pen vapes instead of cigalikes. Most content carried TV-MA or R ratings. Crime shows and adult dramas featured these devices most often.

Genre films picked up vaping between 2014 and 2017. Action movies, horror films, and cable dramas included vaping scenes. Some productions used pastel or personalized devices for comedic effect. The Lazarus Effect brought vaping to PG-13 audiences in 2015. Baby Driver gave Eiza González’s character a pink e-cigarette as a recurring prop in 2017.

Streaming platforms dominated vaping depictions from 2021 to 2025. Truth Initiative’s monitoring found tobacco imagery concentrated in TV-MA series. Pod systems and pen devices appeared in contemporary settings. Characters vaped in background scenes rather than plot-central moments.

Studio Policies Shape Content

World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Article 13 affects how producers handle vaping. National restrictions extend to depictions and product placement. Studios and streaming services developed content guidance around tobacco imagery in youth programming.

Platform policies tightened around paid placements. Trade commentary connects on-screen portrayal changes to these policies. Streaming services created specific rules for tobacco depictions in different rating categories.

Monitoring Groups Count Instances

Truth Initiative publishes While You Were Streaming reports tracking tobacco imagery. Their 2025 report highlighted increased smoking depictions in 2023’s top-ranked series. The organization counts tobacco instances and calculates impression numbers.

These reports focus on streaming originals with high viewership. Youth audience overlap gets particular attention. Vaping falls within their tobacco imagery category, though cigarettes receive more emphasis in published tallies.

Character Development Through Vaping

Rachel McAdams’s character vaped in True Detective’s second season. HBO presented this as a personal habit for the character. The show reached adult crime anthology audiences with its TV-MA rating.

Maps to the Stars included vaping scenes with John Cusack in 2014. The Lazarus Effect incorporated vaping within its horror atmosphere in 2015. Both films treated vaping as character business rather than plot elements.

Production Choices Across Platforms

Entertainment features compile producer commentary about vaping props. Some productions switched from cigarettes to e-cigarettes for contemporary settings. Streaming originals targeting adults made these substitutions based on ratings sensitivities.

Showrunners use vaping to signal modernity. Characters vape to differentiate themselves without smoke restrictions. The Tourist’s explanatory dialogue introduced audiences to the technology itself.

Audience Reach and Cultural Impact

Films with vaping scenes reached large audiences. The Tourist performed well at the box office. Baby Driver gained cultural traction during its release window. Consumer articles frequently reference both films when listing on-screen vaping examples.

Streaming shows with vaping scenes attract millions of viewers. House of Cards reached global Netflix audiences. True Detective pulled strong HBO viewership numbers. Monitoring groups link depiction visibility to audience scale when discussing exposure metrics.

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