Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Health & Body

Urge: Naked World
Burkina Faso women break their silence on forced vows
Gender equality is guaranteed under the 1991 constitution, but in practice, change has come slowly for the largely rural, illiterate populace.
By Hank Hyena
[02/08/00]

I am a smoker
I hate you, too.
By Carina Chocano
[02/08/00]

Camels and cowboys
I'll always be a smoker, even when I quit.
By Tate Gunnerson
[02/08/00]

Column
Annie Sprinkle swims forward
A sex icon takes stock in the aftermath of her devastating houseboat fire and finds satisfaction as a mermaid.
By Virginia Vitzthum
[02/08/00]

Urge: Naked World
You'll never meet Mr. Right with your bed facing north
Can Chinese interior design turn a lonely bedroom into a lusty love nest? It worked for Karen. She moved her bed, painted the walls and met Mike.
By Hank Hyena
[02/07/00]

Complete archives for Health & Body

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Called a "potential bomb," the unprecedented ruling underscores fears among many that the Americanization of France has reached epic proportions. Even Americans concur, depending on which side of the fence they're on. Says Michael York, a lawyer representing Philip Morris, "Tobacco-style lawsuits are probably the most shameful export of the American economy."

What is your level of nicotine addiction? Calculate it here. Also, find out all you need to know about smoking at the Tackling Tobacco Center.

It's impossible to overlook the French love affair with the cigarette, which as an icon fits neatly alongside the baguette and glass of Bordeaux. The Gourlain ruling threatens to tarnish this image as clouds of jurisprudence slowly pile up on the French horizon. Several other individual lawsuits are pending, including one case involving the regional social security branch of Saint Nazaire, which is suing Seita for reimbursement of the millions spent treating smoking-related illness -- illnesses that cost the French government roughly $15 billion in social security health payments this year and took an estimated 60,000 lives.

Francis Caballero is the man behind the movement. Demonized in the press as "malicious and sly," the feisty lawyer attributes his legal zest in part to the time he spent working with the Ralph Nader-influenced Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington. "I'm audacious," says Caballero. "I'm impassioned by America and don't hesitate using the law as a tool for initiating social change. This is a very un-French concept."

Caballero, who cites Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt as a role model, is also a lawyer for the National Committee Against Tobacco Addiction (CNCT), France's only militant, activist-style anti-tobacco organization. With multibillion-dollar Seita in the ring, the CNCT -- modestly funded and largely dependent on volunteers -- is engaged in a David-and-Goliath battle. But it persists. And Caballero, with the CNCT, has almost single-handedly taken on the otherwise unapproachable bastion of European tobacco. Says he, "We've worked like dogs for 10 years on this case. We're fighters who shock people." This is a slight understatement, according to the people at Seita.

"We categorically denounce the Americanization of French life by legal machinations," says J.P. Truchot, a spokesman for Seita and the Center for Tobacco Information and Documentation (CDIT). "This is an unacceptable form of health fascism that comes directly from America. It is a total aberration in France." Truchot emphasizes the importance of separating passion from reason in the tobacco debate, ignoring the fact that, all things considered, smoking is clearly an act of passion.

Citing voluminous stacks of studies -- including one from Germany that suggests that nonsmokers pose a greater economic burden on the state because they live longer -- Truchot calls the dangers of secondhand smoke an "American fabrication." And he warns of an impending American-style "victimization consciousness" that hovers on the edges of France's looming tobacco lawsuits. "I call them all the X-Files of tobacco."

Individual rights are at the center of the debate on both ends: Smokers fear an infringement on their individual rights to smoke, while nonsmokers fear an infringement on their individual rights to breathe. All this might not be such a big deal if the French culture prided itself more on civic behavior and respect for the law. Because in 1991 the Evin Law was passed -- a hefty piece of legislation, written by a Parliament member of the same name, that banned cigarette advertising in all media, outlawed smoking in many public places and required nonsmoking sections in restaurants. But aside from IBM, however, which made headlines in France when it imposed an entirely smoke-free environment in its Parisian headquarters, the Evin Law is largely unknown or simply ignored. Smoking is widespread and commonplace not only in restaurants, which are virtual dens of cigarette smoke, but even in public buildings normally considered symbols of public health.

Next page | We don't care if you have a nice day