ABSTRACT
Although tobacco is a legal substance, many governments around the world have introduced extensive legislation to limit and restrict smoking and access to tobacco products. These legislative efforts, which include the designation of increasing amounts and categories of space 'smokefree', point-of-sale presentation rules and packaging legislation together with public education campaigns, have ushered in a new political, temporal and spatial atmosphere of 'smokefree'. Smoking has had a presence in a great many anthropological analyses, but it has been a topic of interest in and of itself. The chapter proposes an approach that begins with the close examination of the broader atmosphere of 'smokefree' into which smoking and smokers are enfolded. The capacity of the air to circulate ideas and to permeate bodies has been pressed into service in the era of smokefree, and has produced particular sorts of relations with the state and the smoking person. The chapter also provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
