Tobacco.org

• Saying goodbye to a certain art de vivre  

It's rough, but for two months now French law has banned smoking - except in restaurants, discothèques, casinos, cafés and bars. In 2008 even these havens will disappear.

Some European countries have been more stringent, and their citizens' sufferings less plangent, but smoking has been part of the very fabric of French civilization since 1561, when Jean Nicot (who gave his name to nicotine) brought tobacco from Portugal to ease the sick headaches of Queen Catherine de Médicis. After airbrushing iconic cigarette butts from photographs of Sartre and Malraux, will the next step be to remove the clay pipes from the paintings of Teniers in the Louvre?, wonders Tigrane Hadengue, founder with Michka Seeliger-Chatelain of the Musée du Fumeur in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.

Possibly. Already café owners have been urged to augment cigarette counters with pinball and foosball machines, pharmacies are hustling patches, vaporizers and pills, and workers who sneak a puff in office doorways have been warned that they face a €183, or $243, fine, inflicted by 90 plainclothes enforcers, for tossing butts on the pavement. "The streets of Paris must never become one giant ashtray," a city official said. . . .

Temporary selling exhibitions include tobacco-leaf paintings of Mayan gods by Frédéric Dagain and reproductions of caricatures of famous smokers. There is also a room upstairs that can be rented for parties and is especially popular with publishers, Michka says, since they all like to smoke. "Just try to stop them," she says.

Jump to full article »