WHERE THERE'S SMOKE...THERE'S MORE.

LIGHTS OUT FOR LIGHTING UP?

I was never a smoker – which is surprising, given the peer pressure applied by the society in which I was raised. My parents smoked. When I refused that first cigarette, my father assumed I feared his disapproval, and urged…all but demanded I light up. I resisted, but only just.

It didn’t stop me from envying the ease with which my contemporaries smoked; the women in particular. A lighted cigarette held between two slim fingers, the smoke curling lazily, that casual flick to dislodge a fall of grey ash; the taste of tobacco on lipsticked lips. It was film noir condensed into a kiss.

Bette Davis . Nobody smoked better.

One glaring anomaly of recent attempts to recreate ‘forties America, such as Netflix’s series Hollywood, has been the near absence of tobacco. Ashtrays, packs, lighters, matches and smoke were ubiquitous in cars, cafes, private homes, offices, even cinemas. It’s clear, however, that smoking, along with how to eat with chopsticks, is not a skill taught to today’s actors. The gingerly manner in which they place a butt between their lips suggests that, given the choice between a Lucky and the male member, they would not hesitate.

Moving to Paris from Los Angeles, I graduated from the high school of smoking to the Sorbonne of cigarettes. The French consumed tobacco as if taking a sacrament. In every café, every cinema, a stratum of smoke hung just above one’s head. Empty packs of Gauloises and Disques Bleu littered the pavement. Cendriers – what we Anglophones called, inelegantly, ashtrays - were collected as objets d’art. Even the cigarette butt has a more euphonious name here. They’re megots, and each year a whopping 350 tons of them are swept up from the city’s pavements and gutters.

Well, less so these days. A quarter of the population still smokes daily, even though smoking in offices, shops, cinemas, bars, cafés, restaurants and on public transport has been banned since 2007. As of July 1^st, it will also be banned in spaces where children could be present, including "beaches, parks, public gardens, outside of schools, bus stops and sports venues.”

But how about café terraces? Because that’s where much smoking still takes place; not only among clients but with the staff on their break, who congregate a few metres away from the paying customers to sneak an express and a smoke.

To this query, the official response has been “Well…umm…let’s get back to you on that.” Because anything that menaces the already precarious hospitality sector can only bring down its wrath on the government’s head. Politicians wake up sweating with visions of waiters spitting in their soup, and worse.

The now-ubiquitous terrace.

Something similar happened when, during Covid, cafes were permitted to build temporary wooden terraces onto the sidewalk and even into the parking areas in front of their premises. (This also suited our anti-automobile mayor, since it reduced parking spaces and narrowed streets.) An attempt to roll back that permission when lockdown ended was greeted by stiff resistance from the trade. These days, terraces are permitted from April to September. And in the same spirit, while cafes and restaurants may not actually encourage smoking outside, cendriers will be diplomatically provided.