cigarsMajor U.S. print media portray cigars favorably; despite widespread coverage of the health effects of cigars smoking, they generally frame cigar use as a lucrative business or a trendy habit, rather than as a health risk. Rich people are often caricatured as wearing top hats and tails and smoking cigars. In the United States a poor-quality cigar is sometimes called a "dog rocket". These cheap cigars are often converted into blunts rather than smoked directly. Cigars are often smoked to celebrate special occasion: the birth of a child, a graduation, a big sale. The expression "close but no cigar" comes from the practice of giving cigars as prizes in games involving good aim at fairgrounds.

King Edward VII enjoyed smoking cigarettes and cigars, much to the chagrin of his mother, Queen Victoria. After her death, legend has it, King Edward said to his male guests at the end of a dinner party, "Gentlemen, you may smoke." In his name, a line of inexpensive American cigars has long been named King Edward.

President Ulysses S. Grant of the USA and Dr. Sigmund Freud were both known for regularly smoking an entire box (25 cigars) a day. Challenged on the "phallic" shape of the cigar, Freud is supposed to have replied "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Winston Churchill was rarely seen without a cigar during his time as Britain's wartime leader; so much so that a large cigar size was named in his honour.

Rudyard Kipling said in his poem The Betrothed, "A woman is only a woman: but a good cigar is a smoke."

Since apart from certain forms of heavily cured and strong snuff, the cigar is the most potent form of self-dosing with tobacco, it has long had associations of being a male rite of passage, as it may have had during the pre-Columbian era in America. Its fumes and rituals have in American and European cultures established a "men's hut"; in the 19th century, men would retire to the "smoking room" after dinner, to discuss serious issues.