Need a Place to Puff? Hint: Grab Your Passport

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When France's stiff antismoking laws took effect in late 1992, people girded for some of the nastiest civil unrest since the storming of the Bastille. Smokers, who represent more than one-third of all Frenchmen over age 12, cried "Egalite! Liberte!" and vowed to puff on. They should have saved their breath for the next cigarette. Despite laws that severely restrict the number of public places where French smokers are allowed to puff their Gauloises, they continue to light up with impunity virtually everywhere. Designated nonsmoking areas in offices and restaurants are routinely ignored, as are curbs in public transport stations: butts account for three of the 20 tons of garbage collected daily in the Paris Metro. To date, only one citizen has been prosecuted for smoking -- and he was hauled before a judge only after he ignored requests to leave a cafeteria's nonsmoking area, then threw a pitcher of water, injuring a five-year-old.

The disjuncture between law and practice may be extreme in France, but it is not unique. Around the world, legislators have followed the U.S. lead in trying to stub out tobacco by restricting smoking areas, banning or limiting cigarette ads, imposing steep taxes and issuing ominous health warnings. But with a few notable exceptions, such as in Singapore and Australia, cultural attitudes and habits have largely quashed such efforts. Foreigners, who seem only too eager to inhale most aspects of American culture, regard the U.S. obsession with smoking as overwrought. "The whole thing," sniffs German teacher Waltraud Gruneisl, "borders on mass psychosis."

That's not to say that antismoking efforts have been negligible. Bans in public buildings, cinemas, hospitals and schools are in effect -- and widely ineffective -- throughout Asia and Europe. On the theory that impressionable youths learn by example, Singapore's military personnel are not permitted to smoke in public, and teachers in the United Arab Emirates are hounded by health officials to quit the habit outright. In India, which has the world's highest incidence of oral cancer (largely due to tobacco chewing and the popularity of smoking beedis, a rolled leaf filled with tobacco), the smoking characters in Hindi films and soap operas are almost always bad guys. Cigarette ads have been banned from television in most countries and from the print media in many. Even in South America, where antismoking zeal has yet to catch fire, Colombia and Brazil restrict TV ads for cigarettes to "adult" viewing hours.