PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Janet Hoek
AU  - Ninya Maubach
AU  - Rachel Stevenson
AU  - Philip Gendall
AU  - Richard Edwards
TI  - Social smokers' management of conflicted identities
AID  - 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050176
DP  - 2012 Jan 01
TA  - Tobacco Control
PG  - tobaccocontrol-2011-050176
4099  - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2012/01/20/tobaccocontrol-2011-050176.short
4100  - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2012/01/20/tobaccocontrol-2011-050176.full
AB  - Background Although social smoking has increased among young adults, it remains a poorly understood behaviour. The authors explored how young adult social smokers viewed and defined smoking and the strategies they used to reconcile their conflicting smoker and non-smoker identities. The authors also examined alcohol's role in facilitating social smoking and investigated measures that would decouple drinking and smoking.Methods The authors conducted 13 in-depth interviews with young adult social smokers aged between 19 and 25 years and used thematic analysis to interpret the transcripts.Results The authors identified four key themes: the demarcation strategies social smokers used to avoid classifying themselves as smokers, social smoking as a tactic that ameliorates the risk of alienation, alcohol as a catalyst of social smoking and the difficulty participants experienced in reconciling their identity as non-smokers who smoke.Conclusions Although social smokers regret smoking, their retrospective remorse was insufficient to promote behaviour change, and environmental modifications appear more likely to promote smoke-free behaviours among social smokers. Participants strongly supported extending the smoke-free areas outside bars, a measure that would help decouple their alcohol-fuelled behaviours from the identity to which they aspire.