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Cough, cough ... and the winner ... cough ... is 

The curse of tobacco has followed Sean Penn to the Cannes Film Festival.

In a light-hearted moment yesterday in an otherwise serious press conference, Penn snuck a few puffs and groused about the problem.

"I've been discouraged from smoking," Penn said in complaining about the down side of being jury president. . . .

"For some medical reason, we need to smoke," filmmaker Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) said with a mischievous grin . . .

"Would it bother you?"

A few journalists applauded. She then lit up with a flourish, as did Penn and French actress Jeanne Balibar.

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Cannes Day 1: Bearish juror, bear-suited extras 

A remarkable combination of arrogance and charm, Penn allowed that he'd been "discouraged" from smoking during the news conference, a request he hasn't always complied with when visiting the Toronto International Film Festival.

But he lit a ciggie near the end after Satrapi asked the journalists if it would okay "for medical reasons" for the jurors to smoke. She puffed along with Penn, and so did Balibar.

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Our man in Cannes: Where high and low culture meet 

At this point the press conference suddenly became a smoking event when - wait for it! - jury member and Persepolis director Marjane Satrapi lit up a cigarette. Penn and French actress Jeanne Balibar quickly followed suit. Surely a nicotine craving is just as big an impediment to enjoying Kung Fu Panda as a full bladder.

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CANNES FILM FESTIVAL JURY SMOKE UP A STORM OF CONTROVERSY 

Iranian director Marjane Satrapi and French actress Jeanne Balibar lit up as they were being introduced to the media, despite protests about smoking in public. And the 2008 jury president, Sean Penn, who had previously been told he couldn't smoke during the press conference, then chose to ignore the rules and lit a cigarette. Under protest, Satrapi insisted, "Some members of this jury, for medical reasons, need to smoke. Do you mind?"

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• Sean Penn leads Cannes revolt against French smoking ban  

US actor and director Sean Penn lit up and led a minor revolt at the Cannes film festival against France's draconian new anti-smoking laws.

Penn, the head of the jury that will pick the best films, pulled out a cigarette and puffed on it at a press conference with fellow jury members, in defiance of laws in place since January that ban smoking in public enclosed spaces.

He only took a couple of drags before putting it aside and getting back to answering reporters' questions.

But jury member Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian director clearly inspired by her colleague's defiance, then asked to much laughter if anyone minded if she smoked "for medical reasons."

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• Sean Penn’s Fiery Revolt - New York Times 

Defying France's strict new antismoking laws, Sean Penn, right, president of the jury at the 61st Cannes Film Festival, lighted a cigarette at a news conference yesterday, Agence France-Presse reported. After a couple of puffs in defiance of rules that banned smoking in enclosed spaces since January, he put the cigarette aside and returned to answering reporters' questions. But a jury member, the Iranian writer and director Marjane Satrapi, prompting laughter, then asked if anyone minded if she smoked "for medical reasons." She lighted a cigarette; Mr. Penn and the French actress Jeanne Balibar joined her.

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French tobacco shipments drop 10.2 percent in April - industry association  

Deliveries of tobacco products to French tobacconists fell 10.2 percent in April from the year-earlier period, the Federation of tobacco industries said

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• Hookah bars in Paris fight smoking ban 

there remains an unexpected pocket of resistance: hookah bars.

The owner of one Paris hookah café says he has been on a hunger strike for two months to protest the ban on indoor smoking, which took effect Jan. 2. Other owners of "shisha bars," as the salons are known here, have simply chosen to break the law by continuing to offer customers tobacco in water pipes.

"We have no choice," said Badri Helou, president of the Hookah Professionals' Union. "If we don't offer what our customers used to come for, our companies will go bankrupt."

Hookah bars, which began springing up in France more than a decade ago, became increasingly popular across Europe, both among immigrants from Islamic countries and among the hip student crowd. Helou's union estimates that France had 800 hookah bars before the smoking ban, half of them in Paris or its suburbs, but that perhaps one-third have closed since the ban took effect.

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• BAT Sees No Disruption To Supply Of Lucky Strike In France 

British American Tobacco PLC (BTI) Tuesday said a French legal move to stop the import into France of Lucky Strike cigarettes bearing unlawful advertising wouldn't disrupt the supply of the brand.

A French court Monday ordered a stop to the import of BAT's Lucky Strike cigarettes, due to a breach of France's code of public health.

The court ruled that descriptions on Lucky Strike packs of the cigarettes' "subtle" aromas and "fresh and original" flavors were a form of tobacco advertising. It gave BAT itself and Lucky Strike's distributor in France, Altadis Distribution - now owned by Imperial Tobacco Group PLC (ITY) - 48 hours to halt the imports.

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Smoking = Not Sexy 

Soon-to-retire model Kate Moss is on the cover of the new issue of French Vogue, for the second time in a handful of months.

Smoking causes cancer. Why do people feel the need to glamorize it????

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Fewer heart attacks since smoking ban  

New figures from France and Italy show reductions in heart attacks since the introduction of smoking bans.

The latest figures from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) showed a 15pc fall in emergency admissions of patients with heart attack and strokes in France.

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Job loss from poor health, smoking and obesity: a national prospective survey in France  

Background and objectives: Health selection into unemployment may be either direct or operate by reference to health-related behaviours rather than health per se (indirect selection). Panel data are desirable to investigate selection effects, and the two types of selection processes may be concurrent. We examine jointly the roles of health and health-related behaviours as precursors of unemployment, in order to disentangle direct from indirect selection processes. . . .

Conclusion: Those findings confirm the intrinsic role of poor health and of health-related behaviours as precursors of unemployment, with gender-specific patterns for the latter. Public policy prescriptions regarding employees’ protection from job insecurities should integrate appropriate accommodations of health limitations, and the personal factors underlying unfavourable work and health behaviours should be investigated, in order to thwart indirect selection phenomena.

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Positive effects from smoking bans 

The Irish Heart Foundation has welcomed new figures from France and Italy showing reductions in heart attacks since the introduction of smoking bans in these countries.

The latest figures from the European Society for Cardiology (ESC) show a 15% fall in emergency admissions for heart attacks and strokes in France, following the public smoking ban in 2007.

Italy has recorded a 11.2% reduction in the number of acute coronary events since the introduction of its smoking ban in January 2005.

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• Bohemian Hermes 

Gypsies and luxury don't seem like the likeliest of couples, but they teamed up brilliantly at the latest collection by Hermes, a tour de force by the label's designer Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Staged Saturday on a Slavonic carpet and with Romany music gurgling out of the soundtrack, the show featured a marriage of haute gamme hippie and the unique ability of the Hermes atelier to create products of exceptional quality. . . .

Gaultier's vision of Hermes is very much uptown, but not uptight - one model even walked down the catwalk clutching a lit cigarette, which is possibly illegal under new French anti-smoking laws, but looked just right.

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Is smoking on the runway a do or a don't? 

Jean Paul Gaultier must have wanted to go for the shock effect because he sent a model down the runway smoking a cigarette during Monday's Hermes show. I guess that's what happens if the clothes on their own are not interesting enough to get people talking.

Really, I do understand the look he was going for. The model was dressed in a mature, elegant coat and belt combo. Jean Paul probably thought that the cigarette would add sophistication.

But, c'mon! In this day and age we know better. I thought we had moved beyond the whole idea that smoking is glamorous

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