The Smoking Light Is On and the Cigar Is the Star : The stogie is gaining in popularity, especially among young urbanites. Despite health warnings, upscale smoking lounges are proliferating.

Cigars, the odorous pariahs of the anti-smoking age, are rising from the ashes.

In the past, the cigar has typified fat-cat businessmen and back-room dealers. Now, the stogie is staging a social and economic comeback. Sales have surged, and upwardly mobile urbanites find chic pleasure in lighting up.

The new popularity of the high-end cigar has triggered a boom in upscale smoking lounges--places that allow the aficionado to purchase or smoke a cigar in a setting akin to a gentlemen’s club.

On the Westside, a dozen cigar lounges have opened. Beverly Hills alone has six and counting.

“I feel like Beverly Hills is turning into Cigar World,” said Lisa Stafford, manager of a highbrow cigar store and lounge, Davidoff of Geneva.

Last year, cigar sales nationwide increased 7.3% from 1993, bringing the total number of cigars sold to 2.3 billion, says Norman Sharp, president of the industry group Cigar Assn. of America.

The trend has lit up concerns of health care professionals, who say cigar smokers face an increased risk of neck, mouth and lip cancers.

However, it’s not the fear of carcinogens that dominates the talk in the plush confines of Nazareth’s Fine Cigars, the oldest lounge in Beverly Hills.

Owner Nazareth Guluzian presides in the small salon lined with built-in wooden humidors, talking to customers who relax on a pair of diamond-tucked leather couches.

Now Guluzian counts a large clientele, many of whom retreat to the lounge in the face of a public hostile to pungent cigars.

Divorce attorney Marvin Mitchelson, a smoker for 35 years, said he faces stiff opposition to lighting up at home. “I have 29 rooms in my home,” he said, “and I can’t smoke in any of them.”

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So what prompts the cigar smoker to brave the wrath of family, friends and strangers?

It may be the desire to be extravagant, spending $21.45 for an Aniversario No. 1 from Davidoff, industry experts and smokers say.

Or it could be the feeling of camaraderie that cigar smokers enjoy when discussing their favorite Troya clasico or H. Upmann corona major.

Or it could be the glamour of cigar smoking.

Cigars and a cigar smoker’s image can hardly be separated, whether the smoker wants to be identified as a big shot in business or as an affluent rebel.

Reinforcing the image of success is the increasing number of celebrity smokers, including Bill Clinton, David Letterman, Bill Cosby and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The cigar mania gave the industry a banner year in 1994, when the number of cigars sold increased for the first time after a steady decline since 1970.

The strongest growth in the market has come from premium cigars, which cost $1 to more than $20. They are generally hand-rolled and imported and consist of half-leaves of tobacco.

And more men in their 20s and 30s are reaching for petit coronas or short, fat robustos.

“The younger crowd has really been picking up on this,” said David Peck, manager of Thomas Hinds Tobacconist in Beverly Hills. “When I first started in this [field] six years ago, I thought cigar smoking was an old man’s thing.”

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With the younger generation in mind, Beverly Hills business owner Phillip Dane, 28, has opened a lounge he describes as “sort of House of Blues meets cigar smoking.” He said he aims for “more of a hip crowd,” offering backgammon, his own Great Dane and background music by Counting Crows.

Cigar smoking has also won over a growing number of women.

“People used to be incredulous when they saw me smoking a cigar, but more women do it now,” Stafford said, drawing on a long, thin Davidoff No. 2.

An increasingly popular venue for women who want to light up a stogie is at cigar or smoker nights--specialty dinners held at upscale restaurants. The dinners are usually elegant affairs that team up courses of gourmet food with a variety of cigars.

Health care professionals and anti-smoking activists warn smokers that cigars cause cancer, even though the smoke is not inhaled. Cigar smokers run a greater risk than cigarette smokers for cancer of the lip, mouth, larynx and esophagus, said Dr. Vanessa Tatum, spokeswoman for the American Lung Assn. and a pulmonary specialist.

Despite health concerns, it would appear that cigar smoking is re-entering the mainstream.

“This is the introduction of cigars to a huge number of people,” lounge owner Dane said. “These guys who are young and smoking--we may lose one or two. The others are hooked.”