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Correction: Are social norms associated with smoking in French university students? A survey report on smoking correlates  

Following the publication of the article: Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 2009, 4:4, we noticed that the Competing interests section was incomplete and should read as follows: BD is President of ACTIF (Alliance Contre le Tabac en Ile-de-France), a non-profit association which promotes smoking prevention and provided funding for this study. BD's involvement with the ACTIF is on a voluntary basis and he does not receive any financial compensation for his work.

He was responsible for decisions to partially fund this study. All other authors declare no competing interests.

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In the Paris Métro, Even Dead Legends Can't Smoke  

Whether it's "tobacco revisionism," as critics contend, or political correctness à la française, things have just gotten tougher for smokers in France — including those who've long kicked the habit in death. Métrobus, the company that handles display advertising for the Paris Métro and SNCF rail company, says it was obliged to refuse a poster for Coco, Before Chanel because it violates a 1991 law "prohibiting all direct or indirect advertising" for tobacco or alcohol in most public venues. . .

But Chanel and Tati aren't the first historical figures with (in)famous smoking addictions to have their cigarettes posthumously confiscated. In 1996, for example, France's postal service issued a stamp of French culture and political icon André Malraux using a well-known photo of him — though only after the smoldering butt visible in his hand in the original had been removed.

And in 2005, France's National Library used a celebrated shot of Jean-Paul Sartre to advertise its "Controversies" exhibit, but first airbrushed the ubiquitous clope from between his tobacco-stained fingers. In the end, the altered picture wound up joining the other controversial photos in the exhibition, after detractors noted the irony of the library's effort to erase that ever-present existential detail from the philosopher's life. . . .

Despite the gnashing of teeth all this tampering has prompted, the debate is sure to continue. After all, British director Guy Ritchie will presumably have to feature a pipe in ads for his upcoming movie about Sherlock Holmes, due out in France next year. And promising to be even more inflammatory, marketing will soon start on French director Joann Sfar's film about late French signer Serge Gainsbourg, a pop hero whose bad boy image was built on lavish public displays of tobacco and alcohol abuse. Good luck banning that.

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SAMUEL: Whiff of Kafka to Coco Chanel smoking poster ban  

It has always struck me in France how wide the extremes are between those with a total disregard for rules and those who apply them to Kafkaesque levels. Here we are approaching Kafka over the implementation of a tobacco advertising law banning the "direct or indirect" promotion of smoking. It's as if there is deep fear than any exception to the rule might bring the entire edifice crashing down.

Coco Chanel smoked 50 cigarettes a day. It is almost impossible to find a photo of her without one in her hand or mouth. The original poster for a new film out today on called Coco Before Chanel - which by the way, features in magazines and billboards outside public transport - perfectly projects the fashion legend's androgynous sensuality, fag in hand and in silk pyjamas.

But Metrobus, which runs advertising on Paris' trains and buses, chose to ban it and forced the producers to provide an insipid alternative of her standing next to the male lead. . . .

Libé has once again been vocally lambasting the Tati airbrushing, mockingly wondering why the authorities didn't take offence to the fact that he is not wearing a helmet, is riding an old-fashioned, polluting vehicle and that the small boy riding behind him is not seated securely.

"Why not go all the way?" it asked. It has a point.

All this is, of course, great publicity for the Tati retrospective and the Chanel film,

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Paris bans posters of Coco Chanel star smoking  

The transport authority's decision to remove the posters because they were "unhealthy and inappropriate" was condemned as "ridiculous" by Chanel fans and even by the man who drew up France's draconian anti-smoking laws.

The posters show Tautou as the chain-smoking French creator of the little black dress gazing sensuously at the camera in silk pyjamas, with a cigarette smouldering in her right hand. . . .

The ban comes days after a poster of Jacques Tati, one of France's most enduring comic characters, was altered to conform to French rules prohibiting the "direct or indirect" promotion of tobacco products. The actor-director's trademark pipe was replaced with a yellow windmill - a move which one cinema expert said would have made him "die laughing".

Roselyne Bachelot, the health minister, admitted that the rules were being taken too far. "We're getting pretty ridiculous with this," she said.

Even Claude Evin, the politician behind a 1991 anti-smoking law, said the ban should not extend to "cultural heritage".

There is already concern that another film due out later this year about Serge Gainsbourg, the Gauloise-puffing crooner, will fall foul of the no smoking rules. One of his songs is entitled God smokes Havana cigars.

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• Smoking ban: French transport chiefs outlaw cigarette-puffing Audrey Tautou in Coco Chanel film poster 

Famed for its cafe culture and Gauloises smoking inhabitants Paris has outlawed publicity images of Hollywood star Audrey Tautou playing style icon Coco Chanel - because she's shown smoking a cigarette.

In an extraordinary sign of the times, Paris' transport authority deemed the posters 'unhealthy and inappropriate'.

They show Tautou posing sensuously as the fashion legend responsible for a range of original breakthroughs including the little black dress, round-neck jackets and boucle jackets. . . .

Despite smoking up to 50 cigarettes a day throughout her life, Chanel was 87 when she died in 1971.

Almost all the original photographs of the designer and images from the film show a cigarette in her right hand.

Yet RATP, which runs the buses and trains in the French capital, considered historical accuracy secondary to good health.

'Cigarettes are banned on our entire transport system, and there is no reason why we should be giving them free advertising through this film poster,'

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Cigarettes are banned on our entire transport system, and there is no reason why we should be giving them free advertising through this film poster.
RATP (French transport) spokesman.

Even light smoking ill advised in inflammatory bowel disease patients 

Even light smoking aggravates the condition of patients with the inflammatory bowel condition Crohn’s disease, researchers have found.

All patients who smoke, including those who smoke 10 or fewer cigarettes per day, spend more time troubled by disease symptoms than those who do not smoke, report Dr Philippe Seksik (Hôpital Saint-Antoine & Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France) and team.

They say: “It should be emphasized that, in contrast to cessation, cigarette dose reduction will probably not induce a significant improvement of disease activity or drug requirements.” . . .

The nonsmokers spent 37% of their time troubled by the symptoms of their disease, the team reports in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. This was significantly increased in smokers, at 46% in light smokers and 48% in heavy smokers, and occurred despite smokers tending to use more drugs to suppress their symptoms than nonsmokers.

Smokers were also significantly more likely to require hospital admission relating to their bowel symptoms, at 15% of each smoking group compared with 12% of nonsmoking patients.

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Mr. Hulot's Pipe Censored By Paris Metro  

Jacques Tati's Mr Hulot, whose pipe was as much a trademark as his hat and beige raincoat, is seen riding his Velosolex motor scooter in a poster advertising a retrospective at the Cinematheque de Paris.

But the pipe has been replaced by a small colored whirligig by Metrobus, the group that manages advertising on Paris public transport . . .

A Metrobus spokesman appeared unperturbed, reacting with the kind of assurance in adversity that would have done Mr Hulot proud.

"I really don't understand what all the fuss is about," he said.

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• Paris Métro censors Monsieur Hulot 

The Paris transport authority has made a fool of itself by doctoring an innocent poster featuring Jacques Tati, the late film-maker and actor who played the beloved eccentric Monsieur Hulot. . . .

Tati, who died in 1982, made only nine films but he left an impressive legacy. It's impossible to think of post-war France without Hulot, an old-world character baffled by modern fads and technology. Also, we are told that Tati never smoked the pipe. He just used it as a prop.

And note the moulinettes (windmills) in the opening of the film below.

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M. Hulot privé de sa pipe [M. Hulot Deprived of his Pipe] 

The mishap which touches the poster of the traditional exposition to the scenario writer Jacques Tati, presented in this moment to Paris to the French Cineclub, in any case causes the debate on the strict application of the law Evin. In the center of the official poster, the realizer of the “Holidays of Mr. Hulot” walks on his Solex, a pipe with the mouth. But on the posting campaign diffused in the Parisian subway and buses, this pipe disappeared… with the profit from a windmill. In all, more than 2.000 posters distributed in all network the RATP underwent the small final improvement with the paces of censure.

“Does one Have to prohibit the books of Sherlock Holmes under pretext that he also smoked? ”

Behind this strange initiative, one finds Métrobus, the advertising agency of the RATP.

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• Famed pipe at center of French anti-tobacco uproar 

French activists, defenders of the arts and even a government minister are up in arms over a Paris ad campaign they are calling too politically correct.

The RATP, the Paris public transportation authority, decided to doctor a photo of beloved French actor and director Jacques Tati, removing an iconic pipe from his lips for a poster advertising a Tati film festival.

They deemed the touch-up necessary for the poster to conform with a French law prohibiting the promotion of tobacco products. . . .

"We're brushing up against the ridiculous with this situation," French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot was quoted as saying by the French daily Le Parisien. Bachelot herself voted for the 1991 law that bans tobacco promotion in France.

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French tobacco advertising laws force comedian's posters to omit pipe  

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Instead of puffing pensively in the melancholy fashion that endeared him to millions, the star of M Hulot's Holiday has suffered the indignity of appearing on billboards with nothing but a yellow children's windmill in his mouth.

Métrobus, the publicity arm of the Paris public transport network, says allowing M Hulot the freedom to smoke on buses and underground metro platforms would be an infraction of the law banning advertising of alcohol or tobacco.

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XING: Keep cigarette butts off the streets 

Ever since Ireland became the first European country to ban smoking in pubs, bars, and restaurants, the other members of the European Union have followed suit, gradually outlawing smoking indoors in public places.

But the ban has not deterred people from puffing in the streets. Those of us who do not smoke still get to inhale second-hand smoke when we walk down the streets of London or Paris or Beijing.

I was especially exasperated when I saw cigarette butts scattered around the steps leading down to the subway at Place D' Italie in Paris. Walking down the Avenue Des Gobelins from Place D' Italie, I noticed cigarette butts filling the crevices of iron grates that cover the soil around the beautiful poplar trees.

The litter continued as I turned right . . .

I must confess I haven't paid attention to cigarette butts in the streets of Beijing or other major cities in China. Apparently, the problem is not as serious in Chinese urban centers as it is in Paris, thanks to the hard work of migrant workers who serve society as street cleaners.

We should do what we can to make their job easier. Cities should provide durable litter boxes designed to accommodate cigarette butts. Meanwhile, smokers should show some discipline. They're already poisoning themselves, and the rest of us in the process. They shouldn't add the environment to their victims.

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Japanese expats fight the filth at Paris tourist spots ($$) 

The volunteers, from school age to middle age, gathered outside the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. They donned emerald-green vests and mustard-coloured cleaning gloves, methodically dispersed and got to work. . . .

These men and women belong to an army of environmentalists who have made it their job to rid Paris' legendary monuments and streets of cigarette butts, food scraps, dog droppings and a host of other indignities. But most of the volunteers are not French - they are Japanese. . . .

"The Champs-Elysees, 23 years ago, was one of the most beautiful avenues in Paris - there was no other street like it. Today, it attracts all the scum who believe that you must be dirty to be fashionable," Mr Atwan said, as he threw his cigarette butt on the ground.

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Fashion Diary - The Variety Show After the Shows 

"THESE people are so desperate for anything exclusive that they'll end up in a broom cupboard or a toilet somewhere and no one is allowed in," said Jamie Hince, the lead singer of the Kills, at Fendi's private concert on Wednesday featuring the Gossip.

Mr. Hince was seated in the V.I.P. balcony of a club on the Right Bank called the V.I.P. Room . . .

So there on Wednesday was Mr. Hince's girlfriend, Kate Moss, entertaining some of her uncountable admirers as she alternated drags on a bummed Marlboro and sips of Champagne; and the almost girlishly pretty, chain-smoking LVMH scion, Antoine Arnault; and the ruddy Amazonian American model Angela Lindvall. There was Hilary Alexander, the fashion director for The Daily Telegraph in England, puffing on her own cigarette . . .

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DICKEY: Ballad of the Sad Cafes 

The ban was a long time coming, and the French are, as they are wont to do, accommodating modernity with perversity, adapting to the world's changing norms in their own way and their own good time. But there's no question that something of the old Paris—something essential, it seems to me—has gone. A process of sanitation and homogenization, banalization and alienation is well under way, and probably unstoppable. . . .

At considerable expense, the café rearranged its walls to accommodate a little Siberia for smokers outside, and many still huddle there at lunch or in the early evening. But inside, apart from the lunch hour, the place was empty. In December, after the slowest month that Le Central had seen in 20 years of business, Monsieur Peresse died. I cannot help but feel that, too, is somehow a sign of the times.

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