SMOKERS were savouring their last cigarettes over morning coffee in cafés across France yesterday, with café owners predicting financial ruin as a smoking ban took effect.
French officials said they would not enforce the new measure – aimed at clearing the air in the country's notoriously hazy cafés, bars, restaurants and night clubs – until today.
Smokers at Paris' Café Au Depart were taking advantage of the 24-
hour reprieve to keep the air there as thick as usual, although the mood was notably downbeat.
"It's really a shame," said David Fossey, 32.
"It's the end of a way of life," he said as he stubbed out what he said would be his last – or perhaps second-to-last – cigarette ever.
"I had intended to quit for a while now, but this seals the deal," Fossey said.
Others were more defiant.
Jean-Pierre Aiglement, 55, drinking coffee before starting work as a waiter at the Au Depart, said he wouldn't be "chased out on to the pavement," adding "I'll smoke where I please."
"I don't know, it won't be the same at all," said Alain Filipetti, an electrician, as he nursed an "express" and dragged on a cigarette in a café near the Paris stock exchange. "I've always started the day with a coffee and a cigarette."
Under the measure, those caught lighting up in inside face a 63 fine (£46), while owners who turn a blind eye to smoking in their establishments face a 135 fine. Restaurateurs complain the ban forces them into the uncomfortable role of enforcers and insist it will cause a major decline in business. Smokers who light up with a countertop morning coffee; on the dance floor or after a meal make up a huge customer base.
"Once they start enforcing the ban, this place will be empty," Aiglement said.
In few nations is smoking as much a part of national identity as it is France: A dense haze shrouded the Left Bank cafés where celebrated thinkers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir once held court, and there's hardly a photograph of iconic singer Serge Gainsbourg without a cigarette.
About a quarter of France's 60 million population smoke. The Health Ministry said one in two regular smokers – or some 66,000 people annually – dies of smoking-related illness here, and about 5,000 nonsmokers die from second-hand smoke.
Smoking was prohibited last year in France's workplaces, schools, airports, hospitals and other "closed and covered" public places like train stations. Restaurants and other so-called places of conviviality were given an extra 11 months to allow owners to adapt their establishments to the new rules, which permit smoking only inside special sealed chambers.
Restaurateurs have railed against the chambers, which they insist are prohibitively expensive and urged unsuccessfully for more flexibility in the new measure.
While many French smokers see the ban as an infringement on their rights, others, like Fossey, regard it as an incentive to kick the habit.
In the countdown to the total ban, the government redoubled its efforts to encourage smokers to quit. A travelling campaign with anti-smoking experts visited seven cities in November and December.
Germans huff and puff, butt…WITH the ban, France joins the swelling ranks of European lands – including Italy, Belgium, Spain, Britain and Ireland – which have enacted broad anti-smoking laws.
In neighbouring Germany, eight states launched partial smoking bans in restaurants and bars yesterday.
A group representing German restaurant and bar- owners filed a challenge to the country's supreme court against the new anti-smoking laws – which took effect in Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pom-erania, Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein.
The details vary from state to state, though the German smoking laws are generally less restrictive than the French measures.
A ban on smoking in German trains, other public transport and federal buildings began in September.
Almost a third of Germans smoke. Restaurants and pubs fought hard against regulations on smoking, in part due to the country's Nazi past.
Smoking became a cherished post-war mark of freedom and tolerance after a crackdown by Hitler's Nazi regime in the 1930s, and there was a reluctance among German politicians to force through a ban.
