FRANCE: Try to imagine French cafes and restaurants without the choking, blue-grey haze of Gauloise smoke.
If prime minister Dominique de Villepin keeps his word, the long cherished dream of groups like the Alliance Against Tobacco, the National League against Cancer and the National Committee Against Smoking will be realised in two stages, to be completed by January 1st, 2008.
Mr de Villepin is to issue a decree next month banning smoking in public places, businesses and government offices from February 1st, 2007. But he has granted an 11-month reprieve to bars, restaurants, discotheques and casinos - the places where people smoke most.
Individuals who violate the anti-smoking decree will be fined €75. Establishments that allow smoking will be fined €150.
Mr de Villepin described the measure as "a public health necessity". An estimated 10 per cent of all deaths in France - 66,000 per year - are tobacco-related. The parliamentary inquiry which prompted Mr de Villepin to announce his decision concluded that 5,900 of these annual tobacco victims are passive smokers.
The "delay for adaptation" accorded to bars and restaurants is to enable them to build hermetically sealed smoking rooms with smoke extractors.
To protect staff, nothing will be allowed to be served or sold in these fumoirs.
Opinion polls show between 70 and 80 per cent of French people support a ban on smoking in public places. But tobacco vendors, hoteliers and restaurant-owners are a powerful lobby, and the two-stage ban was interpreted as an attempt to show initiative on an important issue while postponing protest until after next year's presidential and legislative elections.
The health minister proposed the ban last spring, but in the wake of the debacle over the "first job contract", Mr de Villepin delayed controversy by appointing the commission of inquiry. President Jacques Chirac, himself a reformed smoker, insisted that a decision be taken by the end of this year, to lend credibility to his campaign against cancer.
The first anti-tobacco law in France, passed 30 years ago, banned smoking in schools, hospitals and public transport. The more stringent 1991 Loi Evin was never fully enforced. Ireland's example in banning all smoking in public places since March 2004 is often cited in press coverage here.
The government is budgeting €100 million to help smokers kick the habit.
Social security will pay one third of the cost of nicotine chewing gum and patches, and the number of doctors treating tobacco addiction will be doubled.
The minister for trade announced that tobacconists will also receive financial assistance.