Non to smoking? In France?

As a public ban takes hold, we look to Le Musée du Fumeur for answers.
By Geraldine Baum
Los Angeles Times

PARIS — Someone once noted that a sure sign of the passing of a cultural phenomenon is not its disappearance but rather its preservation, or sanctification, in a museum. And so it is now with smoking in France.

After I moved to Paris three years ago from Manhattan, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg doesn't even let you eat artery-clogging cookies, never mind have a Marlboro, I couldn't believe it when I read that only 24% of the French smoke, a figure roughly the same as in the U.S. How was it possible?

I decided that French smokers must be spread over a broader demographic than their American counterparts. Or else they all live in my new neighborhood.

Now, as the bell tolls for that Gitane being sucked, and energetically exhaled, by the person in the banquette alongside me, I have been trying to imagine Paris, the city of such legendary smokers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Paul, my butcher, without its ubiquitous clouds of smoke.

The dawning of the new, improved smoke-free France is scheduled for Tuesday, when the last stage of a phased-in smoking ban goes into effect in all indoor public spaces, including bars, dance clubs and cafes.

(Continued here.)