Over the past decade much has been written by journalists, policy makers, and academics, about young women's leisure time pursuits. A great deal of this interest has focused around a concern that teenage girls in the UK are taking up smoking in larger numbers than their male peers. This paper draws on findings from my small-scale doctoral research into teenage girls' use of tobacco and alcohol in a town in southern England. I examine young women's use of cigarettes as an informal social currency, and as a way of thinking about such tobacco use beyond the deficit model of the young female smoker common to many drugs education interventions. In this paper I draw upon theoretical material from the social theories of exchange to explore how young women's reciprocal networks of cigarettes operate to underpin friendships and mobilise power within girls' social networks. I explore how smoking as a reciprocal gift-giving practice supports and maintains friendship groups and particular gendered practices. My argument is that teen girls create and sustain bonds of friendship through their use and exchange of cigarettes. I want to suggest that within the girls' friendship groups, the flow of branded cigarettes as a resource highlights alliances, inter-group rivalries, and provides space for the production and negotiation of teenage "cool" femininities. (Contains 5 notes.)