Puff, puff… passé?
In a move to protect its youngest citizens, France has announced it will enact a nationwide ban on smoking in all outdoor places that can be frequented by children, meaning your dreams of lounging in a French park with a cigarette are about to go up in smoke.
“Where there are children, tobacco must disappear,” French Minister of Health and Family Catherine Vautrin told Ouest-France on Thursday, adding that the freedom to smoke “ends where children’s right to breathe fresh air begins.”
The ban, which will come into effect July 1, extends to parks, bus stops and areas near schools, the French health ministry said Friday, in a move to “denormalize tobacco and limit its attractiveness.”
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People caught violating the ban will face fines of up to 135 euros (C$210).
And while France is often viewed as a country where smoking is à la mode — it’s not hard to picture people lighting up on a Parisian terrace or cobblestone street — the country has enacted increasing restrictions on tobacco use in recent years.
Smoking bans in places like playgrounds, airports, train stations, nightclubs, restaurants and workplaces are already in effect. As well, hundreds of beaches across France have been non-smoking for several years.
That said, France’s iconic café terraces are exempt from the new ban, as are electronic cigarettes.
Currently, no decision has been made on banning the sales of cigarettes to youth under 18, Vautrin said, but the country is “not ruling anything out for the future.”
When asked about a tobacco tax hike, she said that’s not on the table right now.
According to the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 23 per cent of the French population smokes on a daily basis.
France’s National Committee Against Smoking says more than 75,000 smokers die each year of tobacco-related illnesses — 13 per cent of all deaths.
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