AP Features, December 31st, 2007
France's ban on smoking in cafes and other public places, which starts Tuesday with the start of the new year, will be a "revolution" for the country, the health minister said Monday.
As smokers counted down the hours to the new measure, Health Minister Roselyn Bachelot called the ban a "revolution that is going to better workers' health, everyone's health."
It represents "a great step forward," she wrote in Le Figaro daily.
The ban won't actually be enforced until Wednesday, when those caught smoking face a euro63 (US$93) fine, and owners who turn a blind eye to smoking in their establishments face a euro135 (US$198) fine.
The ban now applies to restaurants, bars, cafes and night clubs after being applied starting in February to offices, schools, airports, hospitals, train stations and other "closed and covered" public places.
The measures are a momentous cultural and health shift in a country where thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were known for holding court while clutching cigarettes in Left Bank cafes.
The impending ban made the cover of newspapers across the country. "A last puff of anguish" was the headline of a story about Paris bartenders gearing up for the ban. "The cigarette is over," read Le Parisien's cover.
Bachelot has repeatedly warned that the ban, which is unpopular with many restaurateurs and bar owners, will be strictly enforced.
"There will be no softening of the law," she told the Monday edition of the daily Le Parisien.
"Our objective is not to annoy people but to protect them," she said. "We mustn't forget that smoking kills 66,000 people each year while secondhand smoke kills 5,000."
