PARIS -- What are all those people doing outside bars and restaurants, shivering to death in the wintry cold? Smoking. That’s what they’re doing.
Addiction is mightier than the freezing temperature. Since the French government banned smoking inside any public space at the beginning of this year, France’s 12 million smokers have had to take to the streets and sidewalks for a smoke.
If the French can stop smoking in public places, why can’t Mexicans? I have just been in Mexico City, where going to a restaurant is unbearable because smokers act as if they owned the place -- and our lungs. There are no smokers more arrogant than Mexicans when they are asked to put out their cigarettes in a public place -- and refuse to do so. They look at you with contempt, as if their right to smoke was more important than your right to protect yourself from disease or death. Most times, they just continue smoking, and if they could, they would even blow their smoke on your food.
All of this, hopefully, will change as soon as the new laws passed by the Mexican Senate and by the Federal District Legislative Assembly go into effect nationwide and in Mexico City. Mexico and France are two of the few countries that are taking definitive measures to defend their populations from smokers and the cigarettes companies that market smoke and cancer.
There are more than a billion smokers in the world. One out of every six inhabitants on the planet is a smoker. The tobacco companies, reacting to new restrictions imposed in wealthier and better-informed countries, have taken their products and exported lung disease to the poorest nations of the world where there is less information about tobacco’s noxious effects.
Many governments would rather receive millions of dollars in tax revenues through the sale and consumption of cigarettes than impose new restrictions and a health policy that would save their citizens’ lives. Poor and developing nations spend only $1 on anti-smoking publicity for every $5,000 they receive from the tobacco companies, according to a recent World Health Organization study.
Among the world’s 192 U.N.-member countries, only 10 have stringent measures banning smoking in offices, restaurants and any closed spaces. This means that now, in this 21st century, 1 billion people will die from health complications due to cigarettes smoking. This information comes from a report financed by the Michael Bloomberg Foundation. Paris is a leading role model. For centuries, it has set the pace for the joy of life -- and the joy for a good life. And today the city is even better -- and smokeless.
Smoking kills. I know this firsthand. My father smoked for 20 years, and died 20 years before his time. Without those cigarettes, he might even have accompanied me on this trip.
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