Down to Their Last Gitanes? - the Globe and Mail Page 1 of 3

Down to their last Gitanes? - The Globe and Mail Page 1 of 3

Down to their last Gitanes? tamara thiessen Paris— TAMARA THIESSEN Special to The Globe and Mail Published Saturday, Sep. 09, 2000 12:00AM EDT Last updated Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 9:37AM EST

I don't know if the Marlboro Man was partial to a steak tartare or Chateaubriand now and then, but he couldn't have felt more at home out of the saddle than if he were let loose on the Parisian dining scene. Guaranteed to be smoke-ringed from entrée to fin, smoke-free restaurants in Paris are nearly as rare as meat-free ones.

In a country that lives bedded in tradition, meat-eating and smoking have effortlessly resisted the entreaties of the world's health brigades. " Paris sans tabac " (Tobacco-Free Paris) is the city's biggest anti-smoking group. The name can best be described as hopeful. Paris without tobacco, most Parisians would opine, is like a croissant without butter -- no longer a croissant, unimaginable if not impossible.

Lately, though, there have been a few choked whispers of possibility. The national television station M6 recently screened an unprecedentedly crusading documentary on the non-smokers cause in France, titled Ca vous dérange? (Does this bother you?).

Carting their cameras around the house of government, the Assemblée Nationale, the trailblazing crew of the program Zone Interdite (No Entry) stopped to quiz several deputies, many of them with their mouths occupied by cigarettes, even cigars and pipes.

Three million Europeans die from tobacco-related causes each year -- the 60,000 French victims represent .1 per cent of its population and make cigarettes the first cause of premature death. Despite having the highest rates of tobacco mortality in world, the French generally dismiss campaigns http://www.theglobeandmail.com/archives/down ... 29/11/2011 Down to their last Gitanes? - The Globe and Mail Page 2 of 3

such as " Tabac, la mortelle habitude " and exhibitions on " toxicomanie " or drug addiction as the health-nut fringe. As increasing numbers of women and youth take to the habit, 160,000 deaths are predicted by the year 2025.

The country of Gitanes and Gauloises has been stuck in the era of cigarette seduction -- ever since their very own Marlboro Man, the Emperor Napoleon III, became a mascot for cigarette advertising. Flagged as l'homme à la cigarette (in contrast to the modern-day X-Files villain,"the cigarette smoking man"), he was embraced as sentimentally as the Marseilles, and popularized in several songs and poems as a symbol of the national identity.

A century later, smoking is shrouded in the same romantic veil -- witness the young Parisian featured in the M6 documentary. Desperately trying to kick the habit, she writes a touching love letter to her chère cigarette , a passionate tribute to the agony of separation.

No doubt the process will involve a change of bedside books. Out with such popular tomes as Le Grand Fumeur et sa passion -- the inside tale of a great smoker and his passion (from the PUF publishing house) -- and the intimate memoir, Tabac souvenir .

While North Americans have moved on to designating no-cell-phone zones in restaurants, non-smokers in Paris are still fighting for a corner in their favourite café, brasserie, bistro or restaurant. They invariably end up poked away in a dull shoe-box area out the back, terribly triste and ambience-free.

In businesses, government offices, universities, cafeterias, computer rooms and even medical schools, the Défense à fumer (Smoking prohibited) and Espace non fumeur (Non smoking zone) signs are barely visible in the seething whirlpools of smoke.

It would be cute to say that anti-smoking legislation has been poorly applied. If you chance to stumble into the elegant and vast entry halls of the Assemblée tomorrow, be careful you don't trip yourself up in the minefield of cendriers , the standup office-style ashtrays of the 1970s. The foyer is as packed with them as it is with smoking deputies.

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The only credible political response in the M6 documentary came from Claude Evin, the Socialist Deputé of the Loire-Atlantique and the former Health Minister responsible for the laughably ineffectual 1991 anti-smoking legislation. "It's completely unacceptable, but very, very typical of the situation in France," he puffed deflatedly.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/archives/down ... 29/11/2011