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New Ban To Air Out France's Smoky Cafes

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By JAMEY KEATEN, The Associated Press

Published: December 29, 2007

PARIS - From next week, one of France's most iconic institutions - the smoky cafe - will be but a hazy memory.

The extension of France's smoking ban to bars, discotheques, restaurants, hotels, casinos and cafes on Tuesday marks a momentous cultural shift in a country where thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir once held court while clutching cigarettes in Left Bank cafes.

For smokers, this is the most distressing part of a phased smoking ban that began in February in workplaces, schools, airports, hospitals and other "closed and covered" public places.

Many bar and restaurant staffers, though, are looking forward to breathing easier and to clothes that don't stink of seeped-in odors from the smoke where they work.

Just about anywhere indoors will be off-limits for smoking, except homes, hotel rooms and sealed smoking chambers.

"The French culture associated with smoking is a 20th-century thing, but we won't forget the experience," ex-smoker Lisa Zane, a Chicago-born singer who lives in Paris, said at Le Fumoir (The Smoking Den) restaurant and bar.

"Smoking seems insane now; we have to adapt."

The Health Ministry says one in two regular smokers here dies of smoking-related illness, and about 5,000 nonsmokers die each year of passive smoking. About a quarter of France's 60 million people are smokers.

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