Elsevier

Health & Place

Volume 19, January 2013, Pages 108-115
Health & Place

Smoking spaces and practices in pubs, bars and clubs: Young adults and the English smokefree legislation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2012.10.009Get rights and content

Abstract

Young adulthood is an important but overlooked period in the development of smoking behaviour. We know little about the impact of smokefree policies on this group. In a secondary analysis of longitudinal, qualitative interview data we explore smoking practices in young adulthood, the role of smoking in the spaces of the night-time economy, and the impact of smokefree legislation. Participants carefully managed their smoking in different spaces in relation to the self they wished to present. This was shaped by the transitional nature of young adulthood. Smoking played a role in constructing time-out periods from the demands of everyday life in a similar way to alcohol use. The restrictions imposed by the smokefree legislation quickly became normal for most; however, the experience of smoking was influenced by the nature and quality of smoking spaces. The re-spatialisation of smoking necessitated by the smokefree legislation may reaffirm processes of social denormalisation and stigmatisation of smoking, whilst simultaneously allowing young adult smokers to produce, in some contexts, a positive, fun, sociable smoker identity.

Highlights

► Young adults' smoking practices and the impact of smokefree legislation were explored. ► Participants carefully managed their smoking in different spaces in relation to the self they wished to present. ► Smoking played a role in constructing time-out periods from the demands of everyday life. ► The restrictions imposed by the legislation were met with a high level of acceptance amongst the young adults. ► The legislation disrupted the connection between smoking and ‘going out’ while instigating the development of new sociable smoking spaces.

Introduction

Reducing smoking is a key public health challenge. Whilst the process of smoking uptake in young people has been the subject of several studies (Michell and Amos, 1997, Plumridge et al., 2002, Johnson et al., 2003), Hammond (2005) has argued that young adulthood (defined as 18–29 years) is an important but overlooked period of development of regular smoking behaviour. He highlights that young adults have different smoking patterns from older adults, being more likely to smoke occasionally and to smoke less. British prevalence data show that young adults (20–34 years) are more likely to smoke than older adults and less likely to be heavy smokers; furthermore, about a third of smokers start smoking after the age of 18 (Robinson and Harris, 2011).

Young adulthood is generally conceptualised as a transitional life-course phase involving changes in social roles, responsibilities and expectations. Arnett (2004) proposed the concept of ‘emerging adulthood’ to highlight the extension in industrialised societies of youth transitions to adulthood, particularly the postponement of the commitments involved in partnership, parenthood and settled employment. Bynner (2005), however, cautioned against an over-generalised conception of this period, highlighting the ‘structural factors and exclusion mechanisms’ differentiating transitions. Nevertheless, for many, this is a period of freedom to explore possible identities before establishing more stable roles of later adult life. According to Chatterton and Hollands (2003), consumption and leisure have consequently become central elements of youth identity, with ‘going out’ to pubs and clubs an important part of many young adults' social lives. They suggest that the spaces of the ‘night-time economy’ are characterised by play, liminality and pleasure, with alcohol as important in shaping young peoples' nightlife activities. Smoking is often associated with socialising and drinking alcohol (McKie et al., 2003); therefore, the spaces of the night-time economy are likely to be important smoking contexts for young adults (Wiltshire et al., 2005, Nichter et al., 2010).

Research on young smokers has tended to focus on smoking uptake in adolescents, highlighting the symbolic significance of smoking and the various social roles it plays, particularly in identity construction (Michell and Amos, 1997, Plumridge et al., 2002, Johnson et al., 2003). Experiences and meanings of smoking in young adulthood are less well understood, although some studies have shed light on smoking in this life stage (Wiltshire et al., 2005, Haines et al., 2009, Scheffels, 2009, Nichter et al., 2010). These studies suggest that the role of smoking in identity construction, presentation of self and facilitating social relations continues to be important in young adults' smoking; however, that the transitions of young adulthood shape smoking behaviour.

‘Social denormalisation’ strategies have become a central element of tobacco control (Bell, McCullough et al., 2010), with smokefree public places a key policy (WHO, 2005). Social denormalisation seeks ‘to change the broad social norms around using tobacco—to push tobacco use out of the charmed circle of normal, desirable practice to being an abnormal practice’ (Hammond et al., 2006). Comprehensive smokefree legislation was introduced in England in July 2007 (Department of Health, 2008). With many public places already smokefree through voluntary policies, the legislation's greatest impact was expected to be on the hospitality sector. It was, therefore, likely that this would particularly impact on young adult smokers.

Evidence suggests that the English smokefree legislation has reduced exposure to second-hand smoke, resulting in substantial health benefits (Semple et al., 2010, Sims et al., 2010, Bauld, 2011, Jarvis et al., 2012). An increase in quit attempts was also observed (Hackshaw et al., 2010), though no acceleration in the decline in smoking prevalence during the 18 months after implementation was found (Lee et al., 2011). There has been little examination of the impact of smokefree policies on young adults. One exception is Kelly's (2009) ethnographic research in clubs following the smokefree legislation in New York City. Kelly highlighted the denormalisation of smoking within clubbing subcultures, the development of new patterns of socialising in nightclub smoking areas and that the legislation has rendered the act of smoking more ‘public’.

Commentators have suggested that the use of social denormalisation strategies, including smokefree policies, may increase the stigmatisation of smokers (Farrimond and Joffe, 2006, Eadie et al., 2010, Ritchie et al., 2010a) and exacerbate health-related inequalities (Bell, Salmon et al., 2010). Hilary Graham (2012) recently identified two main foci of debate around stigma and smoking: the negative ways in which smoking is depicted and the acceptability of policy that increases the stigmatisation of smokers. These discussions of stigma draw on Goffman’s (1963) analysis of the management of an ‘attribute that is deeply discrediting’ in social interaction. Link and Phelan (2001) have argued that stigma is often too vaguely defined and, importantly, emphasise that stigma is a matter of degree. In debates around whether a group is stigmatised, stigma can come to appear static – a presence or absence; however, as Neale and colleagues emphasise, Goffman's conceptualisation of stigma suggests that: “people do not in practice have ‘spoiled’ or ‘unspoiled’ identities… Instead, aspects of their social identity… can be damaged or discredited at particular moments and in particular situations.” (Neale et al., 2011, p. 5).

In addition to the concept of stigma, we draw on Goffman's ideas about the ‘presentation of self’ to explore how young adults manage their smoker identity. Goffman conceptualised the self as, in part, a social product: the result of a successful performance. In The presentation of self in everyday life (Goffman, 1973) he describes how, in face-to-face interaction, individuals must stage a performance that meets the agreed upon ‘definition of the situation’ and that is credited with desired attributes by other actors. This relates back to stigma in that the degree to which an individual can sustain a respectable self in the eyes of others depends on access to structural resources and possession of traits and attributes seen as acceptable by the dominant culture. We use data from qualitative interviews undertaken during a study evaluating the impact of the English smokefree legislation (Hargreaves et al., 2010) to enhance understandings of smoking practices during emerging adulthood, in particular the role of smoking in the spaces of the night-time economy, and how the smokefree legislation impacted on young adults. We examine how this group managed their smoker identity in different spaces and situations in relation to the increasingly negative social climate around smoking, and whether and in what situations they experienced smoking as potentially damaging to their social identity. We then focus on the spaces of the night-time economy, and consider the role of smoking and its relationship with alcohol in contexts that foreground play and pleasure. Finally, we consider the perceived impact of the legislation on participants' smoking practices, particularly in the night-time economy.

Section snippets

Methods

This paper presents a secondary analysis of qualitative data from the evaluation of smokefree England (ESME) study. The ESME study examined the behavioural, social and cultural impact of the legislation in contrasting communities in England. The study methods have been reported in detail previously, along with an overview of the findings (Platt et al., 2009, Hargreaves et al., 2010). Ethical approval was granted by the Research Ethics Committee of the School of Health in Social Science,

The young adult smokers

The 27 young adult smokers were aged between 18 and 29, just over half (15) were men and 14 self-identified as white-British (see Table 1). Twenty-one lived in the southern location.3 At the first interview, seven participants were at college or university, one was unemployed and 19 were

Managing smoking in different spaces prior to the smokefree legislation

The following section focuses on participants' accounts at W1. Woven through their talk were glimpses of the highly moralised context in which their smoking took place, and which framed their understandings. Many were keenly aware of the decreasing spaces and situations in which smoking was acceptable and described a range of situations in which they made different judgements about whether to smoke and how others might perceive their smoking. Indeed many accounts highlighted ambiguous feelings

The new ‘normal’

This section focuses on the 19 participants followed up after implementation of the legislation. For most, the main change in their smoking was in the spaces of the night-time economy. Only one non-drinker was followed up and he reported little change:

[…] I think it affects people…say if they go out for a drink and stuff like that in public places […]. But because I don't really… go out like pubs and clubs and stuff and that it doesn't affect me that much. (Mohammed, W3, 26, SE Asian)

In general

Discussion

This paper reports on a secondary analysis of data from the ESME study which aimed to add to our understanding of young adults' smoking practices, in particular the role of smoking in the spaces of the night-time economy and how the smokefree legislation impacted on this age group. We have suggested that, even prior to the legislation, young adults carefully managed their smoking in different spaces and situations in relation to the self they wished to present, and that this was framed by the

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Steve Platt, Claudia Martin, Deborah Ritchie and Martin White who were grantholders on the ESME study. We are grateful to all those who participated in the study. The paper benefitted greatly from constructive feedback provided by colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, and two anonymous reviewers. Catriona Rooke is funded by the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies (UKCTCS), a UK Clinical Research Collaboration Public Health Research Centre of Excellence.

References (48)

  • J.J. Arnett

    Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties

    (2004)
  • L. Bauld

    The Impact of Smokefree Legislation in England: Evidence Review

    (2011)
  • K. Bell et al.

    “Every space is claimed”: smokers' experiences of tobacco denormalisation

    Sociology of Health & Illness

    (2010)
  • J. Bynner

    Rethinking the youth phase of the life-course: the case for emerging adulthood?

    Journal of Youth Studies

    (2005)
  • K. Charmaz

    Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis

    (2006)
  • P. Chatterton et al.

    Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power

    (2003)
  • Department of Health

    Smokefree England—One Year On

    (2008)
  • M. Douglas

    Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo

    (2002)
  • D.R. Eadie et al.

    Responding to change: how did bar workers adapt to the smoke-free legislation in Scotland?

    International Journal of Environmental Health Research

    (2010)
  • H.R. Farrimond et al.

    Pollution, peril and poverty: a British study of the stigmatization of smokers

    Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology

    (2006)
  • E. Goffman

    Stigma

    (1963)
  • E. Goffman

    The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

    (1973)
  • H. Graham

    Smoking, stigma and social class

    Journal of Social Policy

    (2012)
  • J.R. Gusfield

    Passage to play: rituals of drinking time in American society

  • Cited by (20)

    • Spatial clusters of daily tobacco consumption before and after a smoke-free policy implementation

      2021, Health and Place
      Citation Excerpt :

      Some other factors may explain why we found a reduction in the size of the spatial clusters when including tobacco consumption facilities in the model after the smoking ban. For instance, some smoke-free policies (Geneva included) are limited by allowing smoking in amenities that have dedicated or ventilated areas (van Beek et al., 2019; WHO, 2019), and evidence shows that some individuals may move smoking from indoors to outdoors in public spaces after a smoke-free policy (Kennedy et al., 2012; Rooke et al., 2013), Moreover, it is likely that in areas with a high density of tobacco consumption facilities also exists a higher exposition to other factors that may influence smoking, such as promotion of tobacco products (Giovenco et al., 2020) and tobacco retailers (Finan et al., 2019; Marsh et al., 2020). Indeed, in a complementary analysis, we observed that a high density of tobacco consumption facilities was positively correlated with a high density of tobacco retailers.

    • Where do teens smoke? Smoking locations of adolescents in Europe in relation to smoking bans in bars, schools and homes

      2019, Health and Place
      Citation Excerpt :

      It is possible that this pattern of displacement also occurs among adolescent smokers, and even extends to streets and parks. We suggest that the social smoking practices that are closely related to visiting bars and clubs may be easily relocated outdoors, and therefore allow continuation of smoking in these social settings (Rooke et al., 2013). Our finding that smoking among daily smokers is more prevalent in homes when bars are smoke-free contradicts previous studies which have suggested that smoking bans in bars do not result in more smoking in the home and actually result in more smoke-free rules at home (Mons et al., 2013; Cheng et al., 2011; Hyland et al., 2007; Lee et al., 2011).

    • “Don't smoke in public, you look like trash”: An exploratory study about women's experiences of smoking-related stigmatisation and the connection to neighbourhood-level deprivation

      2019, Health and Place
      Citation Excerpt :

      He articulated three phases of learning associated with being the object of stigmatisation: 1) the realisation that one is ‘not normal’ or bares a stigmatising characteristic; 2) managing and adjusting to a discredited identity; and, 3) passing and/or covering whereby one tries to ‘pass’ as being without the stigmatising characteristic or attempts to hide it from view. In the general population, “considerate” smoking practices and occasional, social, and other nomadic smoking identities have provided avenues to circumvent smoking-related stigmatisation (Bell, 2013; Gough et al., 2013; Poland, 2000; Rooke et al., 2013; Thompson et al., 2009). The social or not-quite-non-smoking identities are particularly common among young adults and early smoking trajectories (Glenn et al., 2017; Biener and Albers, 2004; Nichter, 2015; Rooke et al., 2013; Scheffels, 2009; Scheffels and Tokle, 2017) and are intimately connected to place, space, and inequalities therein (Glenn et al., 2017; Rooke et al., 2013; Tan, 2016).

    • Re-habituating the lawscape of smoking

      2018, Emotion, Space and Society
    • Young adults’ experiences of neighbourhood smoking-related norms and practices: A qualitative study exploring place-based social inequalities in smoking

      2017, Social Science and Medicine
      Citation Excerpt :

      This was a virtual portrait of the local smoking-related social norms and practices among young adults in low-SES neighbourhoods. Social smoking practices may represent part of the fluid or shifting smoking identities common of early smoking trajectories and young adulthood (Haines-Saah et al., 2013; Rooke et al., 2013; Tombor et al., 2015) or a stable consumption pattern (Schane et al., 2009), however the possible connection to social class may be far from benign. Young adults living in low-SES neighbourhoods could be denied access to privileges (e.g., social mobility, rights, and justice; Brown et al., 2013) because of their failure to demonstrate the self-control and restraint inherent to smoking socially.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    1

    Present address: Palliative Care Service, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, 51 Little France Crescent, Edinburgh EH16 4SA, UK.

    2

    Present address: Institute of Education, Social Science Research Unit, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK.

    View full text