Society. Cigarettes banned: The Alliance Against Tobacco also wants a ban on smoking on terraces
Loïc Josseran, president of the Alliance Against Tobacco, welcomed the ban on smoking, effective July 1 , in parks, beaches and around schools, but regretted that the government had not gone "further."
The new bans are "a step forward that will allow us to move further away from smoking," Loïc Josseran, president of the Alliance Against Tobacco, declared on RMC on World No Tobacco Day. "But I think we could have gone a little further, particularly by going onto café terraces," which are "veritable aquariums of smoke and smokers."
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"We are faced with a real lobby of tobacco manufacturers who are working through café and restaurant owners," he lamented, noting that "a good number of these restaurateurs and bars are also tobacconists" and that the government "probably did not want to engage in a standoff" with this profession. Loïc Josseran considered the government's objectives of achieving "a generation free of tobacco by 2032" with these measures to be "illusory," particularly "without increasing taxes" and "leaving smoking areas on terraces."
On Thursday, the Minister of Labor, Health, Solidarity and Families, Catherine Vautrin, announced the implementation on July 1 of a ban on smoking on beaches, in parks, public gardens, around schools, bus shelters, etc. Failure to comply with this ban, promised since the end of 2023 , could result in a fine of 135 euros .
Smoking causes 75,000 deaths each year. And according to figures from the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Behaviors, it costs French society €156 billion per year (lost lives, quality of life, and productivity, public spending on prevention, repression, and care, etc.), with alcohol costing €102 billion.
Le Républicain Lorrain
