This elegant solution is not without risk

After long hésité, Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, announced yesterday on RTL, the prohibition of smoking in public places on February 1, 2007, a period of Grace granted until 1 January 2008 to cafés, tobacco, restaurants, hotels and clubs. From the beginning of next year, the measure thus apply in most public places (read here).

The grumbling of tobacconists, reserves of cafés and restaurants not will therefore not deterred the Government to adopt a regulation that many European countries have already implemented. This decision, strongly defended by the Minister of health Xavier Bertrand is politically sensitive, because it comes in a few months of heavy electoral deadlines.

"13 deaths a day".

But it is now impossible to ignore the numbers. The mission of parliamentary information on the prohibition of smoking in public places set out in the report that she presented October 3: up to 5,000 deaths are due each year to the fact that non-smokers alongside smoking in public places. This represents "13 deaths a day" was observed yesterday evening the Prime Minister. "This is a public health imperative which is binding on everyone", he added. Passive smoking is in fact a real endangering of the lives of non-smokers, which goes far beyond the discomfort they feel.

In addition, legal actions of the employees, victims of serious diseases linked to exposure to tobacco, could bring have vocation to multiply, following the jurisprudence of the Court of cassation on June 29, 2005, which requires employers to protect their employees from passive smoking. Insurance companies have threatened to refuse any coverage if this decision was followed by. Similar decisions could be taken against the owners of cafes and restaurants which spread to the duty to protect their customers from the harmful effects of tobacco.

Therefore finished the glamorous scenes remaining in memory, as Lauren Bacall lighting a cigarette in a restaurant in Casablanca. Finished drafting rooms where full ashtrays, and journalists write their articles in the fever of the news. It is a world that disappears, a style, an aesthetic.

Compensation at tobacconists

There is little parliamentary dispute the merits of such a ban. The State has the duty to protect the freedom of those who want to enjoy public spaces without risking a chronic bronchitis, and lung cancer. Smokers freedom ends where begins the non-smokers breathe without suffocate.

Will of course, for a non-smoker suffering from lung cancer, no one know where and when the smoke of others has made him sick. But what is certain is that there has been a cigarette too, wherever it comes. Owners of cafes and restaurants are now reluctant, but the example of the Italy and the Sweden, where the ban on smoking in public places is at work for more than a year, shows that as little affected the attendance of the public. In tobacconists, they would simply offsets (partial derogation, authorization to perform other duties of public service).

Proceed by Decree

The parliamentary mission recalled its willingness not to stigmatise smokers. Everyone is free to smoke in the street or at home. This elegant solution is not without risk. Children, for example, remain nevertheless compelled to passive smokers.

The Prime Minister has chosen to proceed as soon as November by Decree, faster to implement than a law. The problem is that the Act 1991 Evin said earlier that "it is prohibited to smoke in places assigned to a collective use... except in places specifically reserved for smokers". The Decree specifying the terms and conditions of these smokers spaces has never been applied. Did he not better remove the clause of the loi Evin to spaces smokers, that only a new law could do

This is in any case a text, awaited by many, fought by some, that will be ignited passions, without that its effect is insured. A story to the French.