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French Nicotine Habit Under Assault

The French government has announced that as of February 2007, smoking will be banned in all public places. Similar measures have been passed in New York City and elsewhere, and are seen by many business owners as threatening to their incomes as they run places where smokers make up a significant portion of their clientele. Smoking and the French have long been associated with one another, a typical stereotype of a Frenchman has him wearing a beret, a cup of coffee beside him and a cigarette in hand. To the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the cigarette was essential to his existence.

Existentialism and smoking aside, the French government might be condemning many tobacconists as well as restaurant owners to a future of decreased business. The reason for the ban on smoking in public places is sound, though, as it is estimated that at least 65,000 French die of smoking-related diseases each year. Throughout Europe and other world locales, governments have passed measures either increasing the taxes related to cigarettes in order to make them less accessible to customers, or requiring cigarette manufacturers to place graphic images on cigarette boxes demonstrating the potential effects of smoking on a customer`s health.

Many French can look to role models of the past who embodied the French ideal not for their ideas, but because of the cigarettes they held in their hands. Now it seems that the French are going to have to find some healthier role models, or at least that is what Paris hopes to achieve. Schools, colleges, shops and businesses will have to comply with the new rules by February of next year, and the ban is set to expand to include nightclubs, cafes and restaurants by 2008.