Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: France's cigarette law often up in smoke Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 14:23:38 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \SS (WS) \HD France's cigarette law often up in smoke \BY Susan Benesch \CR ST. PETERSBURG TIMES \DT PARIS PARIS - Even the French language is not yet adapted to nonsmoking. Since a national law restricting smoking took effect more than a week ago, every entrance to the Paris subway is plastered with signs that sound like "Star Trek": "You are entering a nonsmoking space." Another set of signs at the Metro ticket turnstiles pleads: "Train yourself not to smoke beyond this point." Nonetheless, a young man standing on the Corvisart Station platform demonstrated most French smokers' response and the reason why the law has not had much effect. He tilted his pack politely toward each of three women with him, offering a cigarette, and lit up one for himself after they refused. When one of the three mentioned the law that had taken effect a few hours earlier, he laughed and blew out a long, defiant plume of smoke. Cigarettes are still known better to the French as a prop for social scenes than as a method of slow suicide. Many people would not sit alone at a cafe table without a cigarette, and waiters leap forward to offer smoking women a light before they can strike a match themselves. Smokers know it isn't considered polite to berate them. Fode Sylla, president of the national anti-racism group SOS Racisme, lit a cigarette at a meeting Friday and asked with a smile, "It's OK to smoke here, isn't it?" At a party thrown by the American Embassy on the night of the U.S. elections, the rented hotel ballroom was unabashedly filled with conversation, music and smoke, despite a sign near the door that said in French, "Nonsmoking area." The new law, which was announced in May and took effect Nov. 1, applies officially to "all areas that are closed or covered, which welcome the public, or which are used as work places." Smokers who break the restrictions are liable for fines of up to 1,300 francs (just over $250), and businesses that fail to enforce the law can be fined up to 6,000 francs (about $1,150). But enforcement is only theoretical. Police are supposed to capture smokers in the act and impose the fines, but none was collected during the first week of the law. Nathalie Nottet, a spokeswoman for the National Police, has been telling journalists crisply, "I think we have other things to do." An office worker in his 50s in the provincial city of Rennes said Friday: "If someone is smoking, I'm not going to grab him by the neck and haul him away [to the police]. I'll do the same as I've done for the last 19, 20 years. I'll say, 'If you don't mind, please don't smoke.' " One of his colleagues, Jacques Pasquet, a proud smoker, strode off to a room down the hall that has been designated for smoking. "This is fine," he said on his way out. "We should rediscover the ancient custom of going to smoke together in a special place, like in Spain [where certain bars are dedicated to smoking]." French chateaus were also usually built with a special room where men went to smoke. Some smokers are taking the law at least as seriously as the most militant nonsmokers. They have joined the pro-smoking Center for Documentation and Information on Tobacco; the Fraternity of Jean Nicot, named for the Frenchman who introduced nicotine to the monarch Marie de Medicis as a cure for migraines; or the Collective for the Defense of Rights and Liberties (of smokers). The nonsmoking side, in turn, has plastered offices with signs that say: "Passive smoke is one of the leading causes of death in France." Brief films are being shown before features in movie theaters in which a young boy sobs to his friends that his mother has cancer. The other children run home to beseech their parents to quit smoking. In French workplaces, according to the new law, all "common areas," such as hallways and meeting rooms, must be off-limits to smokers. Otherwise, smokers and nonsmokers must work it out between themselves. Many businesses have separated them or set aside unused rooms as smokers' lounges. Workplaces such as banks that admit the public are expected to become nonsmoking, so at the Credit Lyonnais branch at the Place de la Bourse in Paris, several employees have been doggedly trying to quit altogether. About 40 percent of French adults smoke, and about 30 percent of adolescents do. In the United States, by comparison, 26 percent of adults smoked in 1990, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and only about 10 percent of American adolescents now smoke. Paradoxically, polls show that as many as 80 percent of French people support the new smoking restrictions, meaning some smokers say they favor them. "I think it's good because it gives an incentive to quit," said Francois Marot, whose Paris office is observing the new rules - in part. He has smoked a bit less in the last week, he said. Smoking has been banned beyond the doors of theaters and stores, and in the Metro, where previously it was forbidden to smoke only in the trains themselves. Inter-city trains have smoking and nonsmoking cars, as before, but the national railway is considering adding more nonsmoking cars. Aboard the super-fast TGV trains, it is now forbidden to smoke in the bar cars. Restaurants seem to pose the greatest problems, in part because the French take them so seriously and in part because they're often crowded, small and smoky. "It won't be easy," said a harried waiter in a Latin Quarter brasserie two days before the law began. "Most of my customers here smoke. The other day I had just one table of nonsmokers, but boy did they raise a stink!" Smoking is considered by many to be one of the pleasures of a good meal, and they would no more avoid it than they would stop eating pate because of the cholesterol. Even cigar smoking is warmly received in many establishments, as long as the cigar is a good one. In one more effort to turn the social consensus against smoking, the French government hopes to ban all cigarette ads in January. But as the French magazine Figaro noted sardonically, "The heaviest smokers in Europe are Eastern Europeans, and they went without cigarette advertising for decades." SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM