Banning Fags

the French must take one for the team

The vainest nation in Europe, second in skinniest only to the Italians, is pacing out its multi-century PR campaign for one of the deadliest human habits. The French are banning outdoor smoking from all areas where children might be, like parks, bus stops, and beaches. Instagram models everywhere can breathe a nicotine-filled sight of relief—cafe terraces are exempted, your fake carb-filled eating carousels are saved.

Now that Ozempic is ubiquitous, they no longer need to pretend the stench of death sticks is an aphrodisiac. Before GLP-1 drugs, restricting the French from smoking would’ve been like raising taxes for everyone before inventing loopholes for the rich. Your aim is noble (to improve everyone’s living standards), but your naivety is palpable—imagining the powerful (the rich and the skinny) would surrender their dominance (their wealth and their ribcage couture) without a fight.

I am sorry, do I sound bitter? I have always been so with the French, the royalty of the Mediterranean. You see, I come from its peasantry class: the Greeks (or poor, fat Italians…as I endearingly think of my brethren). My compatriots drizzle olive oil and lemon over courgettes while the French confit potatoes in duck fat and still out-shrink us.

I love a cigarette between my anxious knuckles as much as any millennial renting in a European capital. But I am glad our governments have become more paternalistic in their approach towards smoking. In Greece there was furor when we first introduced the indoor smoking ban, and many places turn a blind eye after midnight. In the UK the swan song of the last Tory Prime Minister was to introduce a smoking ban for anyone born after 2009. That would have essentially made Gen Alpha the first smoke-free generation. Technically the UK has now banned disposable vapes but the bill enshrining it in legislation was so watered down that all it achieved was to replace the petit vapes for chunkier refillable ones.

The tobacco-funded free-market think tank machine of Tufton Street has been hard at work penning polemics for The Spectator and The Critic, the voice of the oppressed ruling class, about the grip of the nanny state. In my opinion, they should be ignored. Anyone who’s ever known the type of hack who obsesses over the ‘nanny state’ knows they loved their nanny.

I have no right to tell people to stop sucking fags of course (both of my high-school boyfriends were gay), but progressively banning it from more and more spaces is the way to go no matter how much it hurts to those of us who love it. Your unwillingness to live without it is no different than a woman’s difficulty to get over a selfish lover. She may lash out when her wise girlfriend gently (or forcefully) snatches the phone off her sweaty inebriated palms, but in good time she will be thankful for the intervention.

It is right that this ban is first tested in France. In Greece the government can't afford to make such changes because a tortured, impoverished people can only make so many sacrifices for the future generations. In France on the other hand, the bloated boomeraty are still enjoying exploding pension benefits and suppressed retirement ages.

The other cultural difference that allows the French to accept this transition is that they are intuitively masters of the Art of show-don't-tell. French kids are trusted with a glass of wine at the dinner table not because the French approve of alcoholism and of poisoning developing brains. They are given a drink because their parents want to show them that alcohol is not that special and can be enjoyed in moderation in the right time and environment.

This is how my father in Greece initiated me into alcohol, too. Despite my family not having the taste for it, dad bought me my first bottle of wine when I was 16 (I lived an idyllic Greek childhood so had never had any i.e. I was a raging weirdo with no friends). He said he did it because he wanted me to learn how I react to alcohol at home. Apart from that, we rarely consumed any drinks at home. I never heard my parents crave after a cold one. Similarly we were a smoke-free household. My mom would twist her nose at the whiff of tobacco. My dad’s car never smelled of anything but cologne and pine tree car deodorizer. I grew up with a light-handed attitude towards drinks and cigs. I could have one and stop there for the night with no drama. I theorized that the rootless addicts (normal students with social skills and stamina to party) surrounding me at university in London must have genes more receptive to these substances.

It was only this last Christmas that my aunt unwittingly revealed my father’s lifelong secret. Over freddo cappuccinos she asked me if I’d give him a gift from her: a packet of mini cigars. Excuse moi??? Your dad smokes, did you not know that? No. I didn't. He always told me the cigarette packets in the boot of his car were for his “clients”. Which begs the question, now that he is retired: why are they still there?

Alas, my neural pathways are already fixed. Dad, by hiding his vice, led by example. The absence of nostalgic images of dad and a Davidoff red means I am set in my non-addict ways. Which makes me think, the French are right to restrict scenes of impeccably dressed humans exchanging Gauloises. It is precisely because they know the value of aesthetics, the power of imagery, that they are banning smoking. As much as it would suit me to be the luscious Mediterranean serene sharing my bitch sticks with the interns, I have to settle for the much more useful prototype of the hysterical Greek mother instead. Kids, don’t smoke because if you do you will get cancer and die.

More nudge theory policy goes against the grain of the coming Romantic avalanche but if the French, having spent decades gaslighting us about how they keep their waistlines shrunken, are now willing to take one for the team and indulge in the most unchic government policy, then I say let them. I am sure I’ll find something else to suck on when I next visit Paris.