Abstract: In order to identify cigarette authenticity, a rapid, non-destructive and simple method was established by Attenuated Total Reflection (ATR) Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and used to study cigarette packaging materials. The cigarette samples of several brands were scanned to acquire their ATR infrared spectra. The strong identification points (i.e. micro-area for ATR detection) for each brand were found by combination of intuitive comparison and similarity analysis (correlation coefficient and QC approach). Similarity threshold was determined by Bootstrap method. A model to discriminate the genuine and fake cigarette samples was also established and applied to identify unknown cigarette samples (model or non-model samples). The results showed that all the unknown samples were accurately discriminated with the identification model, and the prediction rate reached 100%. QC approach had a better discrimination capability. The lowest QC value between authentic cigarettes was above 94.620 7%, while the highest QC value between authentic cigarettes and counterfeits (or non-model samples) was 89.152 5% (less than 90.0%). Therefore, compared with the current sensory discrimination method, the developed non-destructive ATR-FTIR method improves the scientific credibility and accuracy for cigarette identification and provides a foundation for the combat of counterfeit cigarettes.