Ban threatens French lifestyles

By Emma Jane Kirby BBC News, Paris

After France announced it is to ban smoking in all public places from next February, Emma Jane Kirby tries to imagine the country's citizens without their customary cigarettes.

Cafes, nightclubs and restaurants must adapt by 2008

Whenever I arrive at the Eurostar terminal of Paris Gare du Nord, I'm always struck by two things - the number of people holding up small children to allow them to urinate against the station walls, and the number of people who are smoking, despite a ban already in place there.

The station has its own idiosyncratic fug - ammonia with a heavy twist of stale ashtrays.

When you venture outside into Paris itself, you might lose the "parfum de pee pee" but you'll never escape the fragrance of fags.

Because it seems that almost everybody here smokes. Especially the young.

It's a sort of intellectual initiation rite - at 16, you get your first scooter, briefly become a communist and roll your first cigarette, and only then do you really merit the title "French student".

'Trademark'

Visit any cafe in any big university town in France and through a cloying haze of smoke you will always see large groups of youths drinking their black coffee and drawing pensively on their Gitanes.

The cafe and cigarette culture here isn't just about being sociable, it has an intellectual aspect too. The more brainy you are, the more you smoke.

This is France... and our rights and our freedom are guaranteed by our Constitution. These people must be free to do as they like and, as you can see, they like to smoke Waiter in smoky restaurant

To the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, the cigarette was more than just his trademark - it was the very essence of his existence.

There was uproar at a Sartre exhibition last year when the organiser, in a nod to political correctness, air brushed the cigarette from the signature photo.

And look at the tobacco dependents of the French political elite, Georges Pompidou, Valery Giscard D'Estaing and - although he's now been forced to give up because of his health - President Jacques Chirac. In fact, his official Elysee website still carries a wistful photograph of him with fag in hand, and a recent - albeit unflattering - biography of him suggests he still works with a packet of cigarettes on his desk and sleeps with one on his bedside table, just in case.

Towards healthier heroes

It's not that the French aren't aware of the fact that up to 65,000 of them a year die of smoking-related diseases, it's just that to the French, smoking simply doesn't equate with lung cancer and bad breath. To them it translates as chic, romantic - an intrinsic part of Gallic culture.

Take a minute to reflect on some of the all time great French icons - Serge Gainsbourg, Brigitte Bardot and Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of the aptly named film Breathless - they were almost never without that "Gitane" or "Gauloise" perched jauntily between their lips.

For some, smoking adds a certain 'je ne sais quoi'

Gainsbourg thought he had divine support for his tobacco habit. He once crooned (albeit huskily) a song about God smoking Havana cigars.

And now the French are going to have to find a new, healthier breed of hero. From February next year smoking will be banned in schools, colleges, shops and businesses and by 2008 the same rules will apply in cafes, restaurants and nightclubs.

It's difficult to imagine who the new smoke free icons will be. I thought briefly of football star Zinedine Zidane who helped front the EU's "stub-it-out" campaign a few years ago. And then I remembered 'Zizou's head butt wasn't his only gaffe in this summer's world cup.

Unfortunately for him, a long lens camera captured him just before the Portugal game, cheeks sucked in, eyes closed, enjoying a crafty fag before kick off.

Less French?

Last night I went into a restaurant just off the Champs Elysees. I was reminded of Dickens' descriptions of those Victorian pea soup smogs which stealthily clambered up the Thames from the Margate marshes and then proceeded to choke London - except this pollution was inside.

The majority of French people have decided enough is enough - the latest polls show that almost 70% are in favour of the smoking ban

There wasn't a no smoking area in the restaurant so, when the waiter seated me next to a table of eight people all puffing away, I asked him if he minded working all day in such a clearly unwholesome atmosphere.

He looked genuinely surprised. "This is France," he reminded me, "and our rights and our freedom are guaranteed by our Constitution. These people must be free to do as they like - and as you can see, they like to smoke."

And yet the majority of French people have decided enough is enough - the latest polls show that almost 70% are in favour of the smoking ban. Perhaps they've decided they can exercise a new right - the right to go home after a night out without smelling of the party from the week before.

I guess you can tell I'm not a smoker. But I will almost miss the sight of those huddled hordes defiantly puffing away on the platform as my train pulls into Gare du Nord. Somehow France will feel less French.

Heaven forbid they pass a law outlawing infants from urinating in public.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 14 October, 2006 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.