Health authority recommends extending e-cigarette ban
France’s health authority has recommended that the existing ban on e-cigarettes in public places including public transport and areas where children are present should be extended.
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A report from the Council Public Health during the week says that the ban should be extended to include restaurants, cafes and nightclubs.
It says that the ban will close off what it says is, in effect, a gateway to smoking. Such a ban, the report argues, would stop e-cigarettes ‘normalizing’ the habit and help cut smoking rates of under-16s.
It further argues that while e-cigarettes may help cut smoking levels in the population in general, its presence in public places could lead impressionable people to think that smoking was normal.
It add that e-cigarettes should be banned “even if the risks of passive smoking are zero or extremely limited”.
This is just the latest move to stamp out smoking in France.
Last October, the Paris city council doubled the fine for dropping a cigarette butt on the street in Paris to €68 euros.
The increase comes as the city collects 350 tonnes of mégots, as they are known in French, each year.
The Town Hall will also roll out 30,000 new ashtray bins to encourage smokers to dispose of their cigarettes properly, while 100 staff will be tasked with enforcing the rules.
About a quarter of France's population are smokers, which is on the higher end for Western Europe but lower than Spain, Greece and Eastern European nations, according to a 2012 World Health Organisation report.
The local government in Paris, meanwhile, has said that cigarette stubs take up to 12 years to disintegrate, and contains heavy metals and pollutants like nicotine and lead.
One stub can pollute more than 500 litres of water.
The decree to stiffen the fine was passed in March, and city officials handed out warnings throughout the month of September.
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