Smokiest No More

What is the first thing a modern American notices when visiting Europe? All Europeans seem to smoke. There are ashtrays on restaurant tables and cigarette vending machines in bistros. Their healthy Mediterranean diets and bicycling rather than driving around town aren’t preventing lung cancer or emphysema. We Americans may be fat and addicted to our cars, but we breathe easy.

France is the smokiest spot in all of smoky Europe. The Gauloise constantly dangling from Jean Paul Belmondo’s lip in the 1960 film “Breathless” is legendary. Three times more French adults smoke than Americans or Brits. Each year, French smokers discard 25,000 tons of cigarette butts, more than twice the weight of the Eiffel Tower. This seems unbelievable, but we old-timers recall ashtrays on airline seat arms overflowing with butts and they were emptied daily.

Effective yesterday, France forbids cigarette smoking in all parks, beaches, and bus stops. The intent is “to denormalize tobacco and to limit its appeal” to youth. The goal is to make France smoke-free by 2032. Since 75,000 French folk die from smoking-related causes every year, only non-smokers may be breathing by ’32.

France’s National Committee Against Smoking felt that the new ban does not go far enough. “Restaurant terraces and sidewalk cafes should also be smoke-free.” The Health Ministry replied, “We are limiting this to places where children are likely to gather.” Apparently, French kids stay at home while their parents sip wine at outdoor bistros.

The French Health Ministry is encouraged by surveys indicating that one-third fewer seventeen year olds smoke in 2024 than in 2017. However, the Ministry is concerned that “vaping” is skyrocketing among French youth. French kids aren’t dumb. Gauloises taste like crap. Vapes come in more fruit flavors than Skittles.

Perhaps the Eiffel Tower will look better through a fruity scented haze in 2032 than through the bitter blue tobacco haze it has endured since 1889.

By Ed Dufton