France announces world’s toughest anti-smoking laws

[AdamSmith]

France announces worlds toughest anti-smoking laws

Tobacco lobby prepares to fight move to abolish cigarettes over four decades

The Independent

France, where a Gauloise once hung from the bottom lip of every actor or intellectual, plans to move to one of the toughest anti-tobacco regimes in the world.

Garish colours and brand names on cigarette packets will be replaced by health warnings in large type and by prominent photographs of the diseased organs of smokers. Car drivers and passengers will be banned from lighting up in the presence of children under 12.

Although these measures will not take effect until 2016, an uncompromising TV and radio campaign started today, warning that tobacco kills one in two smokers. There will also be a levy on tobacco companies to fund anti-smoking campaigns, and measures to expose the hidden lobbying of the tobacco industry.

The Health Minister, Marisol Touraine, said: We can no longer accept the fact that the number of deaths caused by tobacco in France is the equivalent of an airliner crashing each day with 200 people on board.

Ms Touraines long-term objective is to abolish smoking over 40 years by discouraging new generations from taking up the habit. Her medium-term objective is to reduce the French smoking rate one in three adults to the present British rate of one in five adults, by 2024

Only one other country, Australia, has outlawed cigarette branding and imposed neutral packaging. Similar measures are under consideration in Britain and Ireland.

The big tobacco companies are threatening to sue the French government if it goes ahead with its plan. They say that outlawing distinctive packaging and reducing brand names to small-print, is an assault on intellectual property and contrary to European law.

Tobacconists organisations are threatening street demonstrations. Some centre-right politicians plan to oppose the not in front of the children rule, which would apply to cars and playgrounds. Police officers would be better employed chasing delinquents than smokers, said Thierry Lazaro, a centre-right member of parliament.

Anti-tobacco campaigners hailed Ms Touraines plans as revolutionary. Yves Martinet, of the national committee against smoking, said: For the first time in France, we have a thorough programme to attack the problem.

Until the late 1960s, almost two-thirds of French men smoked but far fewer women. From 1976, a series of increasingly tough measures has been introduced, culminating in a ban on smoking in all public enclosed spaces, including bars and restaurants, from 2006.

The smoking rate among French men is much reduced but the habit has spread among French women. The smoking rate is now gender-equal at just under 30 per cent.

Worryingly for anti-smoking campaigners and for Ms Touraines ambitious plan to get rid of smoking over 40 years French teenagers are now smoking as much as their parents. Officially, the smoking rate among 17-year-olds is 30 per cent, for both boys and girls. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the rate is, in fact, much higher.

Some anti-smoking campaigners were disappointed that Ms Touraines plan includes no further sharp rises in tobacco taxes. The price of a packet of 20 cigarettes in France has doubled in 14 years to 7 (£5.40).

Tobacconists have successfully lobbied for a slowing of price increases which had led to an apparent boom in tobacco smuggling.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/france-announces-worlds-toughest-antismoking-laws-9758836.html

[ihpguy]

Mon Dieu! Quelle horreur!!!

Oh, my! What will the world be like without Gitanes and Gauloises?

Besides less deaths from lung, mouth, tongue and esophogeal cancers?

[AdamSmith]

Inclined to order a carton of these just for the package art. Was addicted to them for several years after college.



When the taste buds occasionally became too numb to register Gitanes, would switch temporarily to the one brand even more noxious...

[Suckrates]

China should take Note.

[AdamSmith]

China should take Note.

Although their household building materials are as toxic as our cigarettes.

[ihpguy]

My ex of 14 years worked in Toulon on the Riviera for a few years and smoked Gitanes(nasty, nasty) and Marlboro.

[Suckrates]

My ex of 14 years worked in Toulon on the Riviera for a few years and smoked Gitanes(nasty, nasty) and Marlboro.

I have a strong dislike for "walking ashtrays".........

[RA1]

I am simply amazed at this initiative. I refused to fly Air Trance aka Air France all these years simply because of their smoking permitted policy. 40 years to fully implement a policy. Wow. I suppose they need to let all the current smokers die whilst they work on preventing new ones from starting. Sorry, but I would be willing to suggest that even if they imposed an immediate ban on any tobacco products period there would be such a black market it would make "drugs" look like small potatoes.

Almost every thing the Chinese produce in one form or another is toxic from dog food to the atmosphere in general.

Best regards,

RA1

[lookin]

Haven't smoked a ciggie for forty-plus years but, if I did, it would have to be one of these.

First heard of them a couple evenings ago while watching a biography of Princess Alice of Battenberg, Prince Philip's late mother, heavy smoker, and part-time resident of Buckingham Palace. One fellow remarked that you could tell when she was in residence by the smell of Woodbines along the palace corridors.

Apparently, these smokes were also known as "gaspers" owing to their high tar, absence of filters, and the inability of novice smokers to handle them.

They sound like the British equivalent of Gitanes or perhaps U. S. war-time Chesterfields.

The harshest thing I ever smoked though were Indian bidis, their only redeeming feature being the low price.

They say there was no cow dung in them, but I was never fully convinced.

[RA1]

When my father's sister, my aunt, decided to switch from Camels to a filtered cigarette, she switched to Winston's. The only problem was she always removed the filter before smoking them, something I never did understand.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

Bidis!

With supreme effort I quit cigarettes at age 32.

About 4 years after that, I took a drag off a friend's bidi, then a few days later thought to buy a pack myself.

Found some in a tiny Indian-goods shop in Somerville, MA that was packed floor to ceiling and wall to wall with what must have been the highest density of merchandise, indeed any kind of matter, this side of the event horizon.

Most everything in there, now that you mention it, looked like it had cow dung involved, one way or another. The place smelled quite good, though, from all the incense etc. on the shelves.

Anyway, I promptly got hooked on those damned bidis, and took nigh on a year to quit them.

I almost want one now.

[MsGuy]

When my father's sister, my aunt, decided to switch from Camels to a filtered cigarette, she switched to Winston's. The only problem was she always removed the filter before smoking them, something I never did understand.

Bless you, RA1, don't be telling them nancy boys all my little secrets.

[lookin]

Anyway, I promptly got hooked on those damned bidis, and took nigh on a year to quit them.

The good news is, what lung tissue you have left should be tough as Kevlar® and let you work without a mask under any earthly conditions.

[Guest StevenDraker]

80% --> government

12% --> producers

8% --> tobacco shops