French Promise to Resist Attack on Smoking

The TimesOnLine reports:

FRENCH smokers were in belligerent mood yesterday after the Government made 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, Xavier Bertrand, the Health Minister, said that the ban would be approved in October and come into force next January.

His announcement drew a furious reaction from Gérard Martini, the joint manager of L’Idéal 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.

M Bertrand sought to appease les fumeurs with a concession that cigarettes would still be allowed in some bars, although not L’Ideal, and in discotheques and casinos. Amid signs of growing public exasperation with campaigns against alcohol and tobacco, the minister said the restriction would be introduced by decree rather than legislation, thus avoiding an inflamma- tory parliamentary debate.

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

His supporters say that 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 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.

One of the long term goals of socialism is to ban fun.