France, the country that produced iconic chain-smokers from Jean-Paul Sartre to Jean-Paul Belmondo, will ban smoking in public places from early next year. Cigarettes will immediately be banned from places such as offices, universities and railway stations starting in February, but cafes, bars, restaurants and nightclubs could be given an extra year to prepare.
The Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, made the announcement on Sunday night, saying he was ”convinced the French people are now ready”. In an interview on LCI television, he said the ban would be ordered ”by decree” in the next few days. ”The issue is ripe in our country, given the experiences that we know of elsewhere,” he added.
About 12-million people in France smoke and there are 66 000 smoking-related deaths a year, as well as 5 000 deaths from passive smoking. Polls have shown that the public largely favours a ban. But on Sunday René Le Pape, president of the tobacconists’ confederation, said bars and cafes would need more than a year to prepare, and warned that the ban would destroy small country businesses.
A government report published last week suggested that cafes, bars and casinos could designate special smoking areas in the form of hermetically sealed and ventilated smoking rooms, where food and drink could not be served, in order to protect bar staff from passive smoking.
The Health Minister, Xavier Bertrand, said in Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday that there would be no exceptions to the ban. The Parliament’s tobacco kiosk would stop selling cigarettes at the end of this year ”as an example”.
Ireland imposed the world’s first nationwide public smoking ban in 2004 and since then South Africa, Italy, Sweden, Scotland, Norway and Spain have introduced laws. – Guardian Unlimited Â