France fears arrival of cigarette-smoking ban

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | December 22, 2007 | William Langley

[Stoat]

France fears arrival of cigarette-smoking ban

By William Langley in Paris
 

Last Updated: 12:35am GMT 23/12/2007

 

 

The authentic French bistro-dweller's look of perpetual anguish requires that the eyes be directed upwards, the corners of the mouth drawn downwards, and a crumpled cigarette balanced vaguely on the horizontal.

• A guide to Western cigarette-smoking bans

  From next month, the expression will feature more despair and fewer cigarettes.

  	Brigitte Bardot avec cigarette

  The day of reckoning has arrived for Europe's most incorrigible smokers. On January 1, it will become illegal to light up in bars, restaurants or nightclubs, and as the deadline nears, a palpable sense of panic is taking hold.

  Cafe owners warn of mass insurrection, businessmen say productivity could plunge, and psychologists fear the country may not stand the shock. Even the national heritage lobby is upset, arguing that smoke is an emblem of Gallic identity.

  The new law bans smoking in all "places of conviviality". If it succeeds, the nation's notoriously smoke-fogged and treacle-ceilinged bars will be transformed into clean air zones. Yet the omens are not good.

  Ever since Jean Nicot, King Charles IX's roving ambassador, introduced the weed to his country in 1561, the French have resisted all attempts to wean them off it.

  Health warnings and tax increases have had little impact, and a 1991 law ordering cafes and restaurants to provide non-smoking areas has been largely ignored.

  Despite an annual smoking-related death toll of 65,000, many French continue to see smoking as chic, sophisticated and romantic.

  They point out that most of the icons of modern French culture, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Brigitte Bardot, have been smokers, and portray the politicians who want to make them give up as hypocrites.

  The law was drafted under former president Jacques Chirac, who, according to a recent unauthorised biography, slept with a packet of Marlboros on his bedside table.

  The taste for nicotine remains particularly strong among the young. To French adolescents, particularly those raised amid the bourgeoisie, starting to smoke is as much a rite of passage as declaring yourself to be a Trotskyist or buying a moped.

  It is calculated that more than half of 15- to 25-year-olds smoke, the highest proportion in the European Union. Efforts to dissuade them have persistently backfired.

  An expensive campaign featuring the football hero Zinedine Zidane collapsed ignominiously a few years ago when "Zizou" was photographed behind his team's dug-out, drawing on a Gauloise.

  "Basically, the government has dumped the whole problem on us," says René la Pape, the Paris-based president of the 19,000-strong café-owners' union.

  "They want to look as though they are being socially responsible, but they don't understand how a cafe works, or why customers come here. Smoking is a part of French life. We have already lost thousands of traditional cafes. Do we want to kill off the rest?"

  This sort of appeal has a strong public resonance. Although polls originally showed a large majority for the ban, support appears to be weakening.

  Writers and intellectuals, mindful of what Jean-Claude Blondel, manager of the venerable Left Bank philosophers' hang-out Cafe de Flore, calls "the shared history of smoking and ideas", are also voicing concern.

  "A world is collapsing," mourned the novelist Philippe Delerm in Le Monde. "Once it was as though intellectual life, invective and seduction could only exist in a cloud of smoke. Those were the days. Smoking may kill, but life kills, too, in just as insidious a way."

  "Look at the old photographs," adds Blondel. "Sartre, de Beauvoir, Colette, Camus, they all smoked." So they did, although at a recent exhibition dedicated to Sartre, the philosopher's trademark cigarette was airbrushed out as a condition of state funding.

  To diehard smokers, such underhand tactics are typical of the government's desperation. They point out that the strength and size of France's favourite cigarettes have been steadily but surreptitiously weakened over the years, and that the ones now sold are but hollow echoes of their former selves.

  In the 1950s, full-strength Gauloises as manufactured by the state monopoly SEITA, mostly from Paraguayan, Syrian and Turkish tobacco, packed 35mg of tar in each cigarette.

  Not surprisingly, there are few people left alive to say what they tasted like, although the blackened of old Paris bars offer some idea of what they might have done to the lungs. The modern versions of the cigarettes have as little as 1mg of tar.

  The battle lines are now drawn. The government insists the ban will be enforced, and has an army of civil and police inspectors to make random checks and issue fines.

  The health minister, Roselyne Bachelot, has declared: "It is the right time to implement this measure. Britain has done it, Italy has done it. It is happening everywhere in the US. We can't go on being out of step."

  Yet many see signs that the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy - a closet Cuban cigar aficionado - may already be backtracking.

  Mrs Bachelot recently softened the proposed rules to allow smoking beneath enclosed awnings on cafe and restaurant terraces. The result has been a rush to buy gas and paraffin heaters, amid confident forecasts of legal paralysis over the definitions of "enclosed" and "awning".

  Another loophole is expected to allow owners of larger brasseries to build "sealed rooms" within their main premises. "We're developing a kind of deluxe VIP, club-like concept with sofas and air conditioning," says Thierry Chevrin, spokesman for Eichenglaud, one of the companies pioneering the idea. "It's going to be really popular and a fantastic opportunity for us."

  Shortly before he inhaled for the last time, Serge Gainsbourg, the celebrated Parisian bohemian and human health warning, claimed that God was a smoker.

  The theory is about to be put to the test. In the meantime, the ban's backers may consider it a triumph if the smog clears enough for them to see who is smoking and who isn't.

[Stoat]

I went to the grocery store (here in Texas) this morning, and noticed a sign which read:

No Smoking within 150 feet of store entrance

I thought to myself, hmm, 150 feet would put me in the middle of the highway. Ridiculous

I find it heartbreaking to learn that a Washington / California / New York style ban has entrenched itself in the Lone Star State.  Do you know if this is a State law or a City or County ordinance?

It is truly a sad day in America if our Texas cowboys (and cowgals) can't smoke anymore......

I went to the grocery store (here in Texas) this morning, and noticed a sign which read:

No Smoking within 150 feet of store entrance

I thought to myself, hmm, 150 feet would put me in the middle of the highway. Ridiculous

[sharkhawk]

In Illinois it is illegal to smoke on an train platform. Even if it is outdoors.

[Stoat]

A smoking ban? Mon Dieu! The next thing you know, they’ll be making them bathe every day.

LMAO

I suppose it's always easier for Socialists to ban something than it is to mandate a behavior.   I suppose they could provide tax breaks for documented, retail purchases of soap, but doing something like that would validate Capitalism, and that would never fly.

[Gabz]

Nanny State Ping

The French aren’t always in favor of such things :)

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Perhaps this ban might FINALLY wake up the French as to the worthlessness of Socialism?

There's better odds with the powerball lottery, but hope springs eternal.

[Stoat]

Thank you very much for pinging your list  :-)

[Gabz]

You are quite welcome.

Merry Christmas and Nanny-Free New Year!!!!!!!!

[elkfersupper]

Who would have thought that France would be so far behind the curve in the socialist, foundless smoking ban hysteria?

[Stoat]

Merry Christmas and Nanny-Free New Year!!!!!!!!

Thank you, and to you as well  :-)

"We don't need no stinkin' nannies"

((((snicker))))

[Stoat]

Who would have thought that France would be so far behind the curve in the socialist, foundless smoking ban hysteria?

I suppose it may be because smoking arrived long before Socialism and became even more deeply ingrained into the French culture and psyche.....

Perhaps an analogy can be drawn to gun rights in America?  We've been a self-sufficient, self-reliant people for a whole lot longer than the Nanny-State antigun / antifreedom Nazis have been around, hence the difficulty that they have in disarming us.

[SW6906]

Just this past week Boeing announced a tobacco free policy for all of its properties. Not sure if this is world-wide or just USA or just Puget Sound (Seattle).

Tobacco free meaning no smoking, no chewing tobacco or any kind of tobacco whatsoever anywhere on Boeing property. This means if factory workers want to "suck a fag", they have to walk ~10 blocks or more to get off-property before lighting up. I can't wait to see how this is going to go over. Should be very popcorn-worthy.......

[SW6906]

Ping!

[AlaskaErik]

Arabs smoke like chimneys. It will be amusing to see what the authorities do about the shisha cafés!

Nothing. They don't venture into the so-called Sensitive Urban Zones.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Joe 6-pack]

My obligatory nanny-state, tobacco-nazi thread bump...

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

- C. S. Lewis

[Old Seadog]

"I smoke because I am French."

[The Ghost of Rudy McRomney]

$hit like that REALLY infuriates me, because it has nothing to do with ‘public health’, only further harrassing and discriminating against smokers.

[razorback-bert]

at a recent exhibition dedicated to Sartre, the philosopher's trademark cigarette was airbrushed out as a condition of state funding.

I do wish Jean Paul was around to comment on this.

[metesky]

Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934

She's 73 yo, WTF did you expect her to look like?

[bill1952]

>WTF did you expect her to look like?

If you look at my post again, you will clearly see that I didn’t write one thing.

Do you always assume a mind reading power?