About a dozen history and political science students huddled against the blustery cold outside the main entrance to the Sorbonne university, the bastion of Left Bank intellectualism. The topic, as they puffed away: France's new law banning smoking in public places such as schools and offices, and an even broader prohibition, set for next year, covering bars, restaurants and cafes.
"I'm in favor of the ban on smoking because when I see people smoking in bars and restaurants next to nonsmokers and children, it's a shame," said Louise Regent, 20, lighting up. Recounting a visit to Ireland, which recently adopted tough anti-smoking laws, she said, "It felt very good to go to a bar, and when you got back home, you didn't stink of cigarettes."
"I am against the ban, because it's a question of liberty," said cigarette-waving Guillaume Dejesse, 20, adding that he always respects the wishes of nonsmokers. "In France, we say one's liberty ends where someone else's begins, as if there is a border between freedoms, and where yours start, mine stop."
With a tentative first step planned for Thursday, France joins a growing movement in Europe, where governments are increasingly bowing to citizens' demands for an end to smoking in public places. The drive is partly in response to medical reports showing that more than 500,000 people a year die from smoking-related diseases in the 27-nation European Union, and more than a million in Europe as a whole.
Belgium banned smoking in restaurants starting Jan. 1. Denmark will ban smoking in workplaces beginning April 1. England will ban smoking in offices, pubs and restaurants July 1 and will raise the legal age for buying cigarettes from 16 to 18 in October. Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Switzerland and Norway have also passed tough anti-smoking regulations in recent years.
"It's a tremendous success story for public health in Europe," said Peter Boyle, director of the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon.
Resistance in Germany
Boyle said Europe's anti-smoking advance began in 1985, when leaders launched an aggressive campaign to reduce cancer rates through educational programs and improved prevention and detection. By 2000, he said, cancer death rates had fallen 9.8 percent.
Since new laws went into effect in Spain last January, for example, smoking among adults has dropped 2 percent, cigarette sales have shrunk 6 percent and nicotine levels in the workplace have fallen 83 percent, according to the country's National Committee for the Prevention of Smoking. The group called the laws "the best advance in public health in Spain in the last two decades."
But it has not been all success for anti-smoking advocates. In Germany, where about 27 percent of people smoke, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Dec. 2 that it intended to ban smoking in restaurants, schools and other public buildings -- though not in bars and pubs -- then backed away from the proposal 10 days later. Officials said they belatedly discovered that Germany's constitution reserved enactment of smoking laws to state governments, but political analysts and public health advocates accused the federal government of caving in to the country's powerful tobacco lobby.
An attempt last year in France to establish tougher smoking laws suffered a similar fate when the government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, faced with plummeting public support and widespread student and labor strikes, postponed enacting a smoking ban, even though polls showed it had wide public support.
According to a survey published last January by the European Commission, 91 percent of French respondents totally or somewhat favored banning smoking in the workplace, and 78 percent favored a ban in restaurants. Even among smokers, 75 percent favored banning smoking in workplaces and 55 percent in restaurants.
Challenges of total ban
The French government plans to implement its new law in two phases, banning smoking in offices, schools, shopping malls and other public places beginning Feb. 1, and delaying the ban in restaurants, bars and cafes until Jan. 1. For many in France, granting a year's reprieve for the some of the smokiest places is a worrying sign that the government might once again back down.
That view is based on experience. In 1991, France adopted the harshest anti-smoking laws in Europe, demanding, for instance, that restaurants create separate smoking and nonsmoking areas. But the law was never enforced, leading to the widespread belief that the new laws will be ignored or changed to avoid a complete ban in restaurants, bars and cafes.
Francis Attrazic, vice president of the hotel, bar and restaurant association representing about 80,000 French businesses, said that without such a compromise, the group's members expect to lose about 20 percent of their customers.
Shortly after opening Restaurant Christophe a year ago in Paris's Latin Quarter, chef and owner Christophe Philippe, 27, decided to make it a nonsmoking restaurant and hung a sign in the dining area explaining, "Smoking severely harms the scent of my dishes." He lost many customers, he said, but as a former smoker who had struggled to quit because of the smoke in restaurants where he worked, Philippe is committed to keeping a smoke-free environment.
"I'm in favor of the total ban, of course, but I doubt it's ever going to be implemented in France," he said. "The other restaurants have one year to adapt to the new law, but I'm sure they'll find a way to change it."
Outside the Sorbonne, Louis Jesu, 19, said he would continue smoking in public places regardless of the law. "It's a tradition in France. Everyone goes to bars and smokes. And everyone will defy this law."
"Some will smoke only to defy the law," said Michael Barbut, 20, laughing and puffing away.
Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said at a news conference last week that as many as 175,000 police officers, health and other inspectors would enforce the new law, fining violators about $98 and the owners of businesses where infractions occur about $195 for each person caught defying the ban. The French government will reimburse people who quit about $65 annually for gum, patches and other anti-smoking aids, he said.
Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.
