France’s addiction to cigarettes is killing around 65,000 of its citizens a year, 5,000 of those from passive smoking. In the hope that these shocking figures can be reduced, the French prime minister has announced that – following the lead of countries such as Scotland – smoking in public is to be banned. From February 2007, smoking will no longer be permitted in stations, museums and shops. Cafes, clubs and restaurants will see the ban come into force in January 2008.
Professor David Matthews, OxHA Board member and director of the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, comments:
'As “ritualistic” and traditional as smoking may be in France, especially (and worryingly) among young people, one cannot forget the fact that tobacco use can contribute to a lengthy, wretched and costly deterioration in the form of diseases such as heart attacks, lung cancer and chronic respiratory disease – hardly a glamorous outcome for the French. The French government must be firm and thorough in its decision.’
The threat to health is clear-cut. In the United Kingdom, where action has already been taken over many years to discourage people from smoking, lung-cancer mortality rates have fallen sharply among men, to a level today that is only one quarter of the deaths that seen in 1960. By contrast, male deaths from smoking in France have quadrupled in the same time period.
For OxHA's slides comparing mortality in the UK and France, click here >> (slides 6 and 7).
Source: BBC News Online, 8 October 2006.