Postcard from France

Much has been written about the French government’s decision to extend the country’s public smoking ban to beaches, parks, and other outdoor areas.

Implemented on June 29, the new law is seen either as France leading the way (in Europe) against a ‘nasty habit’, or as an attack on ‘basic freedoms’. Either way, it has met resistance. According to the Daily Telegraph’s Anna Richards, who visited a beach close to the city centre in Marseilles shortly after the ban was introduced:

People smoked (and vaped) contentedly on the sand. Three policemen, sweating visibly in full uniform, patrolled the beach languidly, but they didn’t appear to have anything to do with enforcing the new smoking ban … I watched them walk past at least five people with cigarettes in hand. The smokers made no effort to conceal them, and the policemen made no effort to intervene.

A week or so later The Times’ Richard Assheton encountered a similar scene:

Naïm Bessah, a lifeguard, told me that in 20 minutes on patrol he had stopped “three or four” people smoking on the actual beach. Smoking had already been banned on Marseille’s beaches anyway, he said, though people “didn’t respect it”.

He added: “Since the new ban, if we see it, we stop people. But it’s not our job.” His heart really didn’t seem to be in it. Two minutes later I spotted him near the men’s loos with his yellow lifeguard’s T-shirt off, cigarette in hand.

To this I can add the following eye witness account, sent to me by a supporter of Forest who is not only French but has just returned from a holiday in the south of France:

Beach every day. No problem to smoke on public beach and I could see a few people smoking. For me on private beach they give you an ashtray as soon as you ask.

How this will play out remains to be seen, but it’s good to know there is some resistance to this pettifogging law.