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The French are fuming at Macron’s smoking crackdown

Let them smoke Gauloises. Credit: Getty

September 5, 2023 - 10:30am

Paris

In a changing world where public health is rightly a priority, it isn’t hard to feel for Parisians of a certain age who are reprimanded for their smoking habits. 

One – let’s call her Élisabeth – is a notorious repeat offender who faces regular fines for puffing in public buildings. Born in the French capital in 1961, she well remembers a time when a packet of Gitanes or Gauloises was the ultimate expression of Gallic chic. 

Whether getting up in the morning, going to bed at night, or indeed doing absolutely anything in between, a smouldering clope was not just permissible, but pretty much compulsory. Everyone from Charles de Gaulle to Brigitte Bardot was a proud chain-smoker, usually picking up the habit in their teenage years when tobacco was associated with sophistication and independence.

Those heady days of freedom are certainly over, and otherwise blameless men and women of a certain age increasingly face censure within President Emmanuel Macron’s nanny state. This is all particularly awkward for nicotine addict Élisabeth, because she is none other than Macron’s current Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne.

It was in July that the 62-year-old was last caught vaping in the National Assembly — France’s equivalent of the House of Commons — and threatened with a €150 (£128) fine. The Prime Minister has form for doing the same thing in numerous other public buildings, including the Senate.

No matter. Senior French elected officials seldom serve their prison sentences (ask twice-convicted felon Nicolas Sarkozy), let alone pay their fines, and Macron has just put Madame Borne in charge of his latest campaign to — wait for it — clamp down on puffers just like her. 

Ludicrous as it might sound, Borne announced at the weekend that her government would “soon present a new national plan to fight against smoking with, in particular, the prohibition of disposable electronic cigarettes, the famous ‘puffs’ which give bad habits to young people”.

In this sense, Borne is a textbook Macron stooge whose primary task is to enact his plans to curtail liberty, equality and fraternity, and to absorb all the criticism for doing so, while he remains loftily aloof.

French leaders have humiliated their expendable lieutenants like this for centuries, but Macron’s attacks on lifestyle freedoms — whether smoking, drinking alcohol, or eating rich food — are considered particularly un-French. More hypocritical still, Macron himself has openly admitted to being an occasional smoker, saying he has used cigars to destress. 

There is even an official portrait of him holding a vape in his office at the Élysée Palace, although the extent of his use remains underexplored. More likely, though — as with his alleged fondness for French alcohol — it’s all part of the nationalistic bon viveur image he likes to cultivate while actually pursuing a restrained, if not thoroughly puritanical, private life.

Even Macron’s romantic life is atypical by the usual standards of French presidents — he’s been with the same women, his former schoolteacher and now his wife, Brigitte, since he was a teenager. In short, there is none of the philandering, boozing, gorging or puffing that used to define Macron’s country, and make it loved around the world. Now, his PR machine can’t hide the prissiness that is making it drearier by the day. 

Given the première dame‘s previous career, perhaps it’s about time she taught him a thing or two about how France used to be. 


Peter Allen is a journalist and author based in Paris.

peterallenparis

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Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago

Unherd incredibly at the end of an article about the nanny state, cancels comments to what end? To preserve the sensibilities of the other users? Comments didn’t contain swearing, racism or incitement to violence. So are we trying to maintain ‘le bon ton’ rather like Macron himself. ‘Plus ça change etc’.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago

Most anyone that leans populist/libertarian dislikes Macron. He practically oozes that ‘we know what’s best for people’ casual condescension that has spawned populist movements across western civilization. That said, I have to believe anti-smoking policies are not even in the fifty most objectionable things he’s done. Even in rural America, there are policies that prevent smoking in public places, the vast majority of which are local laws passed by local voters. I agree that Macron and his ilk need to be called out on their seemingly pathological need to try to rule every aspect of human activity through policies like this, but let’s find a better hill to die on.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago

Salut mademoiselle Macron.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago

Bonjour Macron, la petite gonzesse.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago

Oops, no comments allowed (lol).

Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
1 year ago

I was hoping that Ms Borne was nonchalantly tapping a cigarette from an iconic blue packet and sparking up as she flicked her hair back and shrugged at the security guard. Where’s the joy in vaping? Bof!

Coralie Palmer
Coralie Palmer
1 year ago

Hopelessly ill-informed fatuous article that doesn’t bother to distinguish between vaping and disposable vapes. The latter are ruthlessly targeted at children, have extremely high nicotine measures in the liquids which make them horribly addictive, and are an environmental nightmare.
I quite smoking painlessly with an ordinary vape. I bought the liquid online, where you have a choice of the nicotine percentage from the highest legal level to zero. I reduced the percentage with every purchase. Nine months later, I no longer smoked nor vaped. I might have a vape now and then with the occasional calvados digestif 🙂 and very nice too.

Jane Watson
Jane Watson
1 year ago

It’s enough to make you take up smoking again. I was nearly tempted last time I was in Switzerland and saw Gitanes and Gauloise in recognisable packaging. I’ve never been able to get a decent French tobacco flavour e-liquid.

Tom Hedger
Tom Hedger
1 year ago

Interesting how much that ‘Rightly’ as the ninth word of an article affects the way that one reads it.

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago

Vaping companies are merely drug pushers. The author is clueless about vaping. Equating the legalisation of corporate drug pushing to kids
https://www.lung.org/research/sotc/by-the-numbers/8-things-industry-ecigs
with French revolutionary principles / social freedom is certainly creative. Either that or, as with the now shut-down Public “Health” England quango (which had been completely captured by the Big Vaping lobby), he’s just another big Vaping shill. My blog on the vaping scam is a work in progress, but it’s pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain – vaping is smoking mark II, and all the usual tactics are at play:
https://vapingsucks.blogspot.com/
 5 or 6 years ago, they told us vaping was “just water vapour and was good for you”, lol. Now: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-vaping-damage-your-lungs-what-we-do-and-dont-know-2019090417734

Last edited 1 year ago by Frank McCusker