The Star Wars franchise isn’t usually associated with smoking, but the MPAA rating for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope on Disney+ includes a content warning for “tobacco use” - here’s why. Smoking used to be a regular fixture in movies and TV before the negative health implications became more readily apparent, leading to a general decline in depictions of smoking onscreen - though, in recent years, this has been steadily rising.
While none of the major Star Wars characters are seen smoking in the movies (though R2-D2 sparks one up in an infamous anti-smoking PSA from 1983), smoking definitely exists as a pastime within the wider galaxy. Multiple smoking characters can be seen in various background shots throughout the Mos Eisley Cantina. In fact, smoking was fairly commonplace in the Expanded Universe (now deemed non-canon by Disney and renamed Star Wars: Legends) includes a number of references to tobacco (commonly referred to as “tabac” or “t’bac”, in-universe).
Mos Eisley Cantina is frequented by a few characters who smoke hookah-like devices, which seem to be the smoking apparatus of choice in that galaxy far, far away, with Melas (a lizard-like alien, introduced in the 1997 Special Edition re-release) and Dannik Jerriko (a humanoid alien) seen puffing away in the background. Jerriko even got his own action figure, complete with hookah accessory, and was the subject of an Expanded Universe short story titled “Soup’s On: The Pipe Smoker’s Tale” (written by Jennifer Roberson as part of Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina).
By the time of the prequels, however, Star Wars creator George Lucas was obviously more aware of the negative health implications of smoking and drug use, including a scene in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones wherein Obi-Wan Kenobi uses his Jedi mind tricks to dissuade someone from selling “death sticks”, and urging that the seller “go home and rethink his life”. The seller’s name? Elan Sleazebaggano. Ironically, Obi-Wan Kenobi smoked a hookah in Lucas’s original script for A New Hope; a scene later included in the films’ novelization, ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster (who also wrote Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the first novel in Star Wars’ Expanded Universe).
It’s very unlikely audiences will witness any further smoking in the Star Wars universe, given Disney’s aversion to objectionable behavior of that nature, though alcohol and thinly-veiled drug references are sometimes included. Both Han Solo and Disney-creation Poe Dameron were spice runners before becoming heroes of the rebellion/resistance - the Star Wars equivalent of drug smugglers - and various drinking establishments serve what is assumed to be alcohol. While all of these additions certainly make sense in regards to world-building, they don’t really scream “family content”, yet remain an amusing (and surprisingly prevalent) part of Star Wars’ long franchise history.