Tobacco.org

• Altadis revels, in private, on the mystique of smoking  

Only the select few can enter the online preserve of Altadis, the European tobacco giant. Inside, visitors find a parallel universe in which cigarette smoke takes the shape of a halo, willowy models strut down the runaway with cigarettes hanging from their pouty lips, and icons like Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt flaunt their smokes as symbols of rebellion.

Le Lab, an internal Web site at Altadis, is designed to be part social networking site, part data resource, part virtual pep rally. The target audience is several hundred Altadis brand managers who could use a little inspiration as cafés and restaurants around the world continue to shove users of its wares out the door.

The newest restrictions take effect Jan. 1, when France extends a nationwide ban on smoking in most public places to include bars, restaurants, nightclubs and the last hazy-blue bastion of French society: the café.

Instead of bemoaning its fate, Altadis - a hybrid of old state French and Spanish tobacco monopolies - has taken a cheeky approach to rally its troops as France has followed European smoking strongholds like Spain, Ireland, Italy and Sweden and parts of the United States that have enacted full or partial smoking bans.

The centerpiece of Le Lab is a series of 12 videos extolling the pleasures of smoking produced by the video artist Vincent Gagliostro, a transplanted New Yorker in Paris. . . .

Nicolas Villain, co-director of the CNCT, said that he assumed Altadis was doing everything it could to motivate its employees because he said his organization sometimes got calls from disgruntled workers in the cigarette industry.

"Going forward, of course they want to keep their employees from being depressed and they want to tell them that smoking is a normal thing," he said.

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I want the films to clarify and educate. In some ways it's like reintroducing smoking and what I came up with is responsible smoking. Responsible smoking is about co-existing really. It's about dialogue between smokers and nonsmokers.
Video artist Vincent Gagliostro, who created a series of 12 videos extolling the pleasures of smoking. The videos were produced by Altadis, which placed them on Le Lab, its protected website.