The country that made smoking sexy is breaking up with cigarettes

PARIS -- PARIS (AP) — Brigitte Bardot lounged barefoot connected a Saint-Tropez beach, drafting languorous puffs from her cigarette. Another actor, Jean-Paul Belmondo, swaggered down the Champs-Élysées with fume curling from his defiant lips, capturing a generation’s restless rebellion.

In France, cigarettes were ne'er conscionable cigarettes — they were cinematic statements, flirtations and rebellions wrapped successful rolling paper.

Yet opening July 1, if Bardot and Belmondo's iconic movie scenes were repeated successful existent life, they would beryllium taxable to up to €135 ($153) successful fines.

After glamorizing baccy for decades, France is preparing for its astir sweeping smoking prohibition yet. The caller restrictions, announced by Health Minister Catherine Vautrin, volition outlaw smoking successful virtually each outdoor nationalist areas wherever children whitethorn gather, including beaches, parks, gardens, playgrounds, sports venues, schoolhouse entrances and autobus stops.

“Tobacco indispensable vanish wherever determination are children,” Vautrin told French media. The state to fume “stops wherever children’s close to respire cleanable aerial starts."

France volition prohibition smoking connected each beaches, successful nationalist parks, forests and immoderate different nationalist areas arsenic portion of a nationalist anti-tobacco program presented by the wellness curate connected Tuesday. Tobacco products origin 75,000 avoidable deaths a twelvemonth successful France, Minister of Health and Prevention Aurélien Rousseau said connected BFM television. The authorities volition present authorities astatine the commencement of adjacent twelvemonth to enlarge the scope of places wherever fines tin beryllium levied for smoking, helium said. “Beaches, parks, astir schools -– tons of places had started these experiments and now, it’s true, we’re heading to a wide regularisation to amusement our determination,” helium said. Legislators besides mean to outlaw single-use disposable e-cigarettes, with an archetypal ballot connected a draught instrumentality to prohibition them expected successful the National Assembly adjacent month. 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All Rights Reserved. twitter instagram facebook notification icon">public wellness priorities, it besides signals a deeper taste shift. Smoking has defined identity, manner and cinema present for truthful agelong that the caller measurement feels similar a quiescent French gyration successful a state whose narration with baccy is famously complex.

According to France’s League Against Cancer, implicit 90 percent of French films from 2015 to 2019 featured smoking scenes — much than treble the complaint successful Hollywood productions. Each French movie averaged astir 3 minutes of on-screen smoking, efficaciously the aforesaid vulnerability arsenic six 30-second tv ads.

Cinema has been peculiarly influential. Belmondo’s rebellious smoker successful Jean-Luc Godard ’s “Breathless” became shorthand for youthful defiance worldwide. Bardot’s cigaret fume wafted done “And God Created Woman,” symbolizing unbridled sensuality.

Yet this glamorization has consequences. According to France’s nationalist wellness authorities, astir 75,000 radical dice from tobacco-related illnesses each year. Although smoking rates person dipped precocious — less than 25% of French adults present fume daily, a historical debased — the wont remains stubbornly embedded, particularly among young radical and the municipality chic.

France’s narration with baccy has agelong been fraught with contradiction. Air France did not prohibition smoking connected each its flights until 2000, years aft large U.S. carriers began phasing it retired successful the precocious 1980s and aboriginal ’90s. The hold reflected a state slower to sever its taste romance with cigarettes, adjacent astatine 35,000 feet.

Strolling done the stylish streets of Le Marais, the trendiest vicinity successful Paris, reactions to the smoking prohibition ranged from pragmatic acceptance to nostalgic defiance.

“It’s astir time. I don’t privation my kids increasing up reasoning fume is romantic,” said Clémence Laurent, a 34-year-old manner buyer, sipping espresso astatine a crowded café terrace. “Sure, Bardot made cigarettes look glamorous. But Bardot didn’t interest astir today's warnings connected lung cancer.”

At a adjacent boutique, vintage trader Luc Baudry, 53, saw the prohibition arsenic an onslaught connected thing fundamentally French. “Smoking has ever been portion of our culture. Take distant cigarettes and what bash we person left? Kale smoothies?” helium scoffed.

Across from him, 72-year-old Jeanne Lévy chuckled throatily, her dependable profoundly etched — she said — by decades of Gauloises. “I smoked my archetypal cigaret watching Jeanne Moreau,” she confessed, eyes twinkling down vintage sunglasses. “It was her dependable — smoky, sexy, lived-in. Who didn’t privation that voice?”

Indeed, Jeanne Moreau’s gravelly, nicotine-scraped dependable transformed baccy into poesy itself, immortalized successful classics specified arsenic François Truffaut’s “Jules et Jim.” Smoking acquired an existential glamour that made quitting unimaginable for generations of French smokers.

France’s caller instrumentality mirrors broader European trends. Britain, Spain and Sweden person each implemented important smoking bans successful nationalist spaces. Sweden outlawed smoking successful outdoor edifice terraces, autobus stops and schoolyards backmost successful 2019. Spain extended its bans to café terraces, spaces inactive exempt successful France—at slightest for now.

In the Paris parkland Place des Vosges, lit pupil Thomas Bouchard clutched an physics cigarette that is inactive exempt from the caller prohibition and shrugged.

“Maybe vaping’s our compromise,” helium said, exhaling gently. “A small little sexy, perhaps. But less wrinkles too.”