Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic interviews with smokers in Canada, Australia, the USA and England, we explore the relationships forged between smokers and cigarette packets, which we suggest differ from how they are legislatively imagined.

Paper long abstract:

The cigarette packet has long been a cultivated element of its appeal - from the gleaming case of Benson and Hedges' premium 'Gold' brand to the rugged masculine appeal of Marlboros and the feminine refinement of Virginia Slims. The idea that the 'charisma' of branding might be used against it has been a key thread in tobacco control since the turn of the twentieth century, and reaches its epitome in so-called 'plain packaging' legislation - introduced in Australia in 2012 and due to be implemented in the UK in May 2016. Evident in both the enactment of such legislation and industry efforts to overturn it is the assumption that packets do things. Thus, despite the diametrically opposed agendas of the tobacco industry and public health, both groups share the assumption that the hand that controls the packet rules the smoker. This power is seen to be enacted unilineally and hierarchically via the branded aesthetics of the packet - of either danger or desire, depending on who is in charge - to fundamentally shape smokers' responses to its content. In this paper we take seriously the idea of the agency of objects, but in ways rather different from studies on cigarette packaging that have proliferated to date. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with smokers in Vancouver, Canada; Canberra, Australia; San Francisco, USA and Liverpool, England we attend closely to the experienced (as opposed to assumed) relationships forged between cigarette smokers and packets, which we suggest are rather different from how they are legislatively imagined.