Smoking is a terrible, disgusting habit, and you shouldn’t do it. With that PSA now aside: Damn if it doesn’t look cool in the movies.

But is it real? Reddit user TheCaptainCaptian asked the question in the Explain Like I’m Five community: “Do people actually smoke in movies, or is it some kind of trick?”

The answer: Yes, people really smoke—and yes, there are tricks. Let’s take a look at some examples.

Actors used to smoke real cigarettes in films.

In the 1970s through the late ’90s, tobacco marketers were eager to get their cigarettes in product placements on the big screen. “You used to be able to call up a company and say, ‘I’m doing a movie and need cigarettes,’ and they would send you a case,” veteran prop master Jeff Butcher, who has worked on films such as Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler and Click, tells Upvoted. “For the movie Mystery Train, I remember getting a giant case of Silk Cut cigarettes and we all smoked them.”

A famed smoking scene from the 1989 film:

But that practice mostly stopped after a 1998 settlement agreement between big tobacco and state governments that prohibited cigarette product placement. Also, thanks to health advocates, more films are also going smoke-free, particularly those rated G, PG or PG-13.

Nowadays, actors usually opt for nicotine-free, herbal cigarettes.

Even if actors are smokers in real life, they probably don’t want to inhale cigarettes all day, take after take after take. So they often use herbal cigarettes, which have no tobacco or nicotine. For his film projects, Butcher usually orders Ecstacy Cigarettes, which, according to the brand’s website, are “made with non-addictive herbs and plant materials.” They’re the cigarette of choice for the cast of Mad Men (who cumulatively, have probably smoked about 200,000 of those things).

Another popular brand is Honeyrose, which adds flavoring such as strawberry, honey and vanilla. (Health note: While herbal cigarettes may be an alternative, remember these words from the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Affairs: “There’s no such thing as a safe smoke.”)

Butcher has had herbal cigarettes custom-made for actors who have allergies or other special conditions. “A couple years ago, I worked on Non-Stop with Liam Neeson, who is a former smoker and didn’t want to be smoking cigarettes. So I got vape cigarettes, which I think we ended up not using. And we made cigarettes, hand-rolled them with a machine using chamomile tea. So he smoked tea.”

For the film Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power, Butcher found a shop in Little Italy in the Bronx that hand-rolled cigars with chamomile. So he had some made for actor Mario Van Peebles.

Movie makers can often work around actors’ needs. Natalie Portman was only 12 when she starred in Léon: The Professional, and her parents were worried about the smoking scenes. So they worked out a contract with director Luc Besson saying Portman could only have five cigarettes in her hand throughout the entire film, she would never be seen inhaling or exhaling smoke and her character would give up smoking during the course of the film.

She talks about it here:

In getting the cigarette lengths right, prop masters have to pay careful attention. “You watch the rehearsal and time out what should happen and then you work with a script supervisor to go, “Okay, where are we in the cigarette?” Butcher says. He cuts the cigarette to the right size with scissors, and lights it while using a keyboard vacuum to suck on it. He lets it smoke for a second “so there’s just the right amount of ash on it” and then gives it to the actor.

On other things smoked

Butcher says he’s ordered fake marijuana from International Oddities, which delivers “high grade, low priced legal bud.” James Franco recommended the company to him. “The stuff they used on Pineapple Express came from this place.”

Will the legal bud get you high? The company prefers to say it provides a “multidimensional smoking experience unlike you’ve ever tried before.” For the film Going The Distance, Butcher “smoked an enormous amount of it” to try to season a bong but he “didn’t really feel anything.”

Though Drew Barrymore, the actor in the scene, may have experienced otherwise.

“She smoked it and started behaving in a silly fashion,” Butcher says, laughing. “The director came to me in a panic and was like ‘You’ve gotta do something! She’s so stoned!’ I think it was character acting.”

To depict cocaine, Butcher almost always uses inositol, a vitamin B powder that is a common cocaine cutting agent. It might give actors a “slight energy lift,” Butcher says. The director didn’t tell that to Mickey Rourke when filming The Wrestler and Butcher says he “freaked out” when he started feeling something.

“He was like, ‘I have anxiety issues—now you tell me?'” Butcher says. “He was truly upset. But he was okay a couple minutes later.”

Prop masters have also been known to use ingredients such as powdered sugar, powdered milk, and baking soda as faux cocaine. Ah, movie magic.

See the full discussion about smoking on TV and in movies in the original Reddit thread.