Also adding the caveat about the obvious downsides of smoking before I assert this opinion but one thing that's kinda gotten lost is those micro social encounters you'd get from sharing a cigarette. Whether at work, at uni, at a concert, in a bar, or just about anywhere, those smoke breaks used to be a chance to strike up a 5-10 min convo with someone random. Even today, head to a designated smoke area and more often than not, you'll end up chatting with some stranger asking for a lighter before going back to what you were doing. I don't think society has found some other mundane shared experience to replace this.
It used to be a great way to identify tribes and make friends. You could be at some stuffy conference and the gaggle of smokers would be the drinkers, musicians, poets and rebels. It offered a simple way to give, share and help a stranger that I can't invent in the modern world. I'm sure the non-smokers probably enjoyed our absence too!
In many countries where smoking remains common, the people standing outside an establishment smoking are looking down at their phones, just like they would be looking at their phones on the bus. Trying to strike up any conversation would be a faux pas, and I imagine even asking a stranger for a light could be seen as an intrusion. In our modern world, experiences where people are physically close to one another does not necessarily mean that they will socialize.
