Defiance: France Page 2

Ban ? l’Ecosse will leave French smokers fuming ‘in the toilets’

8 Oct 2006
ELAINE SCIOLINO

THERE is something about smoking that is very French. Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed a cigarette, so did Colette, Bardot, Camus and Coco Chanel.

But as in other European countries, smoking in public is becoming taboo – much to the annoyance of many who are used to lighting up pretty much anywhere, even in the revered corridors of power.

Last week, after a five-month government inquiry, a parliamentary committee approved a proposal to ban smoking in public areas.

Under the measure, caf?s, hotels, restaurants, discos and casinos could designate spaces for smoking only if they could be “hermetically sealed areas, furnished with air-extraction systems and subject to extremely rigorous health norms”.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said he would decide quickly how to proceed on the matter. “The French people would not understand if we do not make a decision” in the face of the research, he told members of parliament last week.

But not everyone agrees. To diehard smokers and many tobacconists and bar and restaurant owners, the campaign reflects the loss of a core French value – the rights of the individual.

“I see this as a personal attack,” said Andr? Santini, a centre-right member of parliament from a Paris suburb and compulsive cigar smoker, who posed for photographers last week in the tobacco kiosk in the National Assembly building. “What disturbs me is the ayatollahs you meet everywhere. They tell you how you have to make love, how you have to eat.”

At the end of the year, the kiosk will no longer sell cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos, only sweets and newspapers. Just as bad, he said, smoking will eventually be banned in the high-ceilinged corridors of the National Assembly itself.

“I’ll end my life where I started it — in the men’s room,” said Jean-Pierre Balligand, of the opposition Socialist Party. “I started smoking like every other schoolboy, in the toilets of my junior high school. And that’s where I’ll end up, in the toilets of the National Assembly, while the school principal, Mr Debr?, screams at us for smoking.”

The “school principal” is Jean-Louis Debr?, the president of the National Assembly, who ordered the ban on the sale of tobacco products inside parliament to “set the example”.

France’s history with tobacco goes back more than four centuries. Nicotine is named after Jean Nicot, a 16th-century ambassador to Portugal who took tobacco leaves imported from America to Catherine de Medici as a cure for her migraines.

But France was also at the forefront in the anti-smoking movement in Europe, passing what was then the toughest legislation on the Continent, in 1991. Smoking was banned in most public places, including restaurants, except in designated areas. Tobacco products were required to carry health warnings. Cigarette advertising was banned in 1993. But there were loopholes and application of the law has been uneven. The new measure is even stronger by making it difficult – and expensive – to create separate smoking areas.

President Jacques Chirac, who at one time smoked up to three packets a day, declared a “war on tobacco” in 2003, and imposed steep tax increases on cigarettes. Today, nearly 80% of the French support the idea of a smoking ban in public places.

Still, about 12 million of the French – about 20% of the population – are smokers, according to official government figures, and more than 70,000 people die in France every year from smoking-related illnesses and secondhand smoke.

Smoking remains particularly prevalent and acceptable among young people. Public high schools routinely allow students to smoke during breaks.

Maison Prunier, the landmark Art Deco oyster-and-caviar brasserie in Paris, still sells high-end, after-meal cigars to its clientele.

But even its managers believe that a ban might not be a bad thing. “We serve gourmet meals, so it’s unfortunate that cigars are smoked here,” said Beno?t Rade, one of Prunier’s ma?tres d’h?tel. “Smoke is a problem for most of our employees, some clients, too.”

La Coupole, the vast, classic Paris brasserie whose trademark once was a haze of smoke, imposed a near-total smoking ban on its own initiative last July in anticipation of a government decree.

Many French businessmen predict serious disruption of their businesses and a decline in profits. They certainly would demand compensation.

“There is going to be considerable damage,” said Fran?ois Attrazic, the leader of the leading restaurant and hotel owners’ u nion and a restaurant owner (and occasional smoker). “We haven’t assessed how much it will be because it’s complicated, but we are hearing things from the countries that have bans, and what it shows is a drop of 25% to 30% in sales in some establishments.”

The issue was so divisive that de Villepin postponed a decision last spring, asking his health minister, Xavier Bertrand, to carry out a “deep evaluation of the different solutions”. Bertrand, who has long advocated a measure to protect people from secondhand smoke in public, said last week: “My conviction is that it’s necessary to ban tobacco in public places as soon as possible.”

Once de Villepin announces his decision, it is expected to be issued as a sort of government-ordered amendment to the existing law. That will prevent the parliament or a lobbying group from trying to block the ban, which would go into effect before next September.

Some anti-smoking politicians want to take their campaign further. Charles-Am?d?e de Courson, a centre-right member, last year introduced a proposal in the National Assembly to ban the sale of chocolate cigars, arguing that young people who had consumed them were twice as likely to smoke.

Yves Contassot, a deputy mayor of Paris, meanwhile, recently floated a proposal to start fining smokers who threw their butts on the street.

STUBBING OUT ACROSS EUROPE
ANTI-SMOKING policies have been sweeping Europe since 2003.

France began the European trend by raising the price of cigarettes by 20% in October 2003.

In Spain, a law banning smoking in offices, shops, schools, hospitals, cultural centres and on public transport was introduced in January this year.

Italy imposed a ban on smoking in all enclosed public places, including bars and restaurants, in January last year to a flurry of complaints that cigarettes and smoking are an integral part of Italian bar and cafe culture.

The Netherlands also prohibited cigarettes from many public places including railway stations, trains, toilets and offices. In Norway, a national ban is also imposed on smoking in restaurants, bars and cafes.

The u nion of Montenegro and Serbia has one of the highest rates of smoking in Europe, with 40% of the population lighting up regularly. In August 2004, the Montenegrin part of the u nion introduced a ban on smoking in public places. Discussions are currently under way for a similar ban to be imposed in Kosovo.

Ireland imposed tough anti-smoking legislation in early 2004, banning smoking in pubs, restaurants and other enclosed workplaces.

Scotland followed suit in March this year. Wales has indicated it will consider the ban if the law is passed in England next year.

---

Smoking ban in store for France
October 4, 2006
Paris – French smokers are bracing for a major culture shock in the coming months as the country prepares to follow several of its European neighbours and enact a ban on smoking in public places.
On Tuesday – after five months of deliberations – a parliamentary committee is expected to recommend a prohibition, and Health Minister Xavier Bertrand has indicated a government decision will be taken later in the month.

---

French Smoking Ban
September 22, 2006
These surveys do not come about by accident and, if the poll company wants more trade, must satisfy the wishes of the client. Obvious examples are those for ASH and Cancer Research UK that were phrased to ensure the desired results far different to the more trusted ones produced by the Office for National Statistics.
Do the French actually favour a ban?? Surely reporters have a duty to research their stories. A look at the figures shows that only 39% WANTED a ban in bars and in true zealot fashion there was no option for undecided or don’t know.
The same poll could, if the publishers were not so hell bent on demonising smokers, be “68% of French want Freedom to Choose” or “Only 32% want Draconian non-smoking laws”
If your reporter made an effort to Google they would have found:—
” To note one framed on a survey to appear the next month in the Review of the Counters, according to which 77% of the French are “rather favorable” to prohibition to smoke in the restaurants, 66% in the bars and 61% in the establishments of night. In addition 86% are “rather favorable” “hermetically to separate the room smokers from the room not smokers” in the establishments of more than 100 m2, and they are 68% to leave to the owner the choice decide statute of its establishment when it makes less than 100 m2.”
The Full document can be found at
http://www.ifop.com/europe/docs/interdictiondefumer_bars.pdf

---

Smoke-free caf?s? France argues about banning a public ritual

September 19, 2006
Patricia Ochs

PARIS Is the French love affair with the cigarette about to be stubbed out? Battle lines are forming here as politicians move ahead with plans to ban smoking in public places – or at least some public places.

Health Minister Xavier Bertrand fired the opening shot last month when he said he would like to ban smoking in places like restaurants and work spaces, but would exempt nightclubs, casinos and France’s 34,000 tabacs, or bars that sell tobacco. He said he wanted the ban to be announced by decree in October and implemented in January.

This infuriated health activists, who said it was ludicrous to ban smoking in some places but not others.

“We strongly disagree with this proposal,” said Elisabeth Mah?-Tissot, head of prevention at France’s National League Against Cancer. “It sends a double message to youth that it is still normal to smoke in some places.”

But the plan also enraged the many smokers for whom caf? life is as important and embedded as the August vacation, and who view smoking as one of life’s daily pleasures, and a right.

Passions flared again last week after the newspaper Le Monde published the initial conclusions of a parliamentary commission that is due to report to the health minister in October. The commission came out against a decree, saying that the ban should be enacted as law after parliamentary debate. It also advocated a total ban on smoking; the only exception, it said, should be in private homes.

The Health Ministry has scrambled to emphasize that its proposals “are just ideas,” in the words of a spokeswoman who did not want to be identified, in line with ministry policy. The idea of a decree, she said, was to act quickly and urgently. “We have 66,000 people dying every year from cigarettes in France,” she said.

France has nearly 12 million smokers, or about a fifth of the population, according to Insee, the national statistics institute.

A spokeswoman for Yves Bur, a legislator on the commission and a longtime antismoking activist, said it would be easier to enforce a ban enacted as a law. But she said it was unclear whether the matter would go to Parliament for debate. “The health minister could still choose a decree,” said the spokeswoman, Estelle Wanou. “We still don’t have any idea” what form the ban may take.

A strong majority of people in France – 78 percent – favors a ban on smoking in public places, according to a survey conducted in February by the IFOP institute. The survey canvassed smokers and nonsmokers.

But it is uncertain whether the French, who gave the world Jean-Paul Belmondo of the dangling cigarette, are prepared to follow Ireland and Norway in conforming to a total smoking ban. (Other countries, including Denmark, Italy, Spain and Sweden, have enacted more flexible bans.)

And even though French public attitudes have shifted, opposition to bans remains, especially from bars, caf?s and restaurants.

“It’s better to persuade people not to smoke, rather than forbidding it,” said Andr? Daguin, president of an employers u nion for the French hotel restaurant and caf? industry. As for the bar- tobacconists, he said, “It’s too hard to ban cigarettes when people buy them in the same place. You can’t then tell people to go outside and smoke.”

Some legislators agree.

“Every establishment must have the right to decide whether to impose its own ban,” Richard Malli?, a National Assembly lawmaker from the southern Bouches-du-Rh?ne region, said in a telephone interview. Regarding health, he said, people “are not obliged to enter a caf? where there is smoking.”

But other politicians and health experts argue that if opportunities to smoke are restricted, people, especially young smokers, will smoke less.

“People still listen to the tobacco lobby in France,” said Yves Martinet, president of the National Committee Against Smoking.

The committee is compiling statistics on how cigarette companies advertise by placing their products in movies and on television, a practice Martinet said was on the rise. “There are an awful lot of Gauloises in ‘Am?lie Poulain’ for example,” he said, referring to the award- winning 2001 film about contemporary life in Paris. In other movies, too, he said, the camera lingers lovingly on a pack of cigarettes that “has absolutely no reason to be there.”

---

Health lies, damned lies and statistics
12 SEP 2006 – One week, health researchers produce figures which “prove” that tobacco consumption, especially among the young in France, has increased. Therefore, Xavier Bertrand, the Health Minister, says that he will impose a ban on smoking in all public places in France (despite considerable public opposition)

Two weeks later, a report appears in Le Monde [link in French], showing that tobacco consumption among French young people has fallen quite considerably (by five percentage points), but that alcohol and cocaine use are rising rapidly.

The two analyses cannot both be true. One factor not mentioned by M Bertrand, because he wants a public smoking ban more than he seems to care for statistical accuracy, is that massive tobacco purchases by British visitors to France, for consumption in the UK, are not shown in the tobacco consumption figures. I am confident that a regional breakdown in tobacco sales would show relative falls near France’s border with Spain and relative increases near the Channel Tunnel and ferry ports to England.

---

French revolt over smoking ban

August 23, 2006
Adam Sage

French smokers were in belligerent mood yesterday after the Government launched what they described as an attack on a fundamental Gallic right when it moved to ban them from lighting up in public places.

After months of dithering over one of the most contentious issues facing the French cabinet, the Health Minister, Xavier Bertrand, said the ban would be approved in October and come into force next January.

His announcement drew a furious reaction from G?rard Martini, the joint manager of L’Id?al Bar in central Paris.

“We’re not going to accept it. We’re going to rebel. This is going to be a revolution,” said M Martini, walking across a thick layer of cigarette stubs on the floor.

M Bertrand sought to appease les fumeurs with a concession that cigarettes would still be allowed in some bars, although not L’Ideal since it does not already have a licence to sell tobacco products, and in all discotheques and casinos.

Amid signs of growing public exasperation with official campaigns against alcohol and tobacco, the minister also said the restriction would be introduced by decree rather than by legislation, thus avoiding an inflammatory parliamentary debate.

“I am convinced that the ban is something people want,” said M Bertrand, adding that cigarettes kill 66,000 people in France each year.

His supporters say France was duty-bound to follow England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain and Italy in banning smoking in public places after Jacques Chirac made the fight against cancer a central theme of his presidency.

But some Government MPs have warned the minister that the land of Gauloises and Gitanes has a unique relationship with the cigarette that will be broken at his own peril.

Many backbenchers are urging him to ditch a measure which they say could cost the centre-right next year’s presidential and legislative elections.

Serge Gainsbourg, the late French singer,once said that his fellow countrymen were unhappy when they were not smoking, and his words were born out in L’Id?al yesterday.

“We’re governed by idiots,” said M Martini. “They’ve already knocked 30 per cent off our sales with their campaigns against drink-driving. Now, they’re going to take another 50 per cent off with the ban on smoking.

“People come in here for a cigarette and drink to wind down after work. If they can’t have the cigarette, they won’t have the drink. We’re going to be hit hard by this.”

Putting down a half-smoked Marlboro to serve a plate of poulet fermier, gratin dauphinois and tomate proven?ale to a customer, Marie-France De Sousa, the joint manager of L’Id?al, agreed.

France says ‘non’ to public smoking
August 24, 2006
Adam Sage
The Government tried to curb the Gallic habit with a 50-per cent increase in tobacco taxes two years ago. But the impact on consumption was limited and M Bertrand says a ban has become necessary.
Under his plan, cigarettes will be forbidden in all public transport, restaurants, bistrots, brasseries, cafes and hotels. However, they will be permitted in France’s 34,000 bars-tabacs – the bars with a state licence to sell tobacco.
The concession was criticised by Yves Martinet, chairman of the National Committee Against Tobacco Addiction. “The message being sent out to the public is confused.”
Read More