The French not that it's a public health issue and it certainly is the leading cause of death in their country but, hype about second-hand smoke and PM2.5 virtual pollution aside, smokers retort that smokers are only impacting themselves. And, they note, it is their L'Assurance Maladie taxes on income and on cigarettes that fund France's Protection Universelle Maladie health care co-payment system.
Nothing will change their minds or they wouldn't still be smoking at all but bans in public spaces may prevent new cigarette smokers from starting. Smoking, like alcohol, is a pediatric disease. Very few take it up as adults, most start in youth, and a ban on cigarettes in public gardens won't stop current smokers but it may prevent kids from seeing it and thinking it is cool.(1)
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That trend is already happening. Young people are just smarter than they were in the past and that is thanks to groups like ours that have opposed smoking and warned about its harms for decades.
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Even in France, where smoking is everywhere among adults, only 16% of teens now do it.(2) That is almost down near teen levels in America. With so much support for a ban due to declines in smokers, the French government was not worried about mass revolt.(3)
A benefit that is short term and for all citizens may be less pollution. Cigarette smokers pollute so casually and so often that it's ridiculous to try and object to the stereotype. Cigars and pipes are no concern, those are all natural and biodegrade fast, but cigarettes contain paper and cellulose acetate - plastic.
Forget microplastics, these are centimeter-sized problems. Get rid of this and you also get rid of 4000% of microplastics. Credit: University of Rhode Island.
Plastic is a little overhyped but we could certainly do with less of it. Microplastics are hyped beyond reality, the same way ultraprocessed food now is. Both are being linked to everything by agenda-driven epidemiologists while scientists can't find anything that would make it out of the EXPLORATORY pile. Environmental groups make money creating hysteria so it is no shock to see them claiming this will prevent microplastic pollution, but it is only true on a technicality, the same way California taking steps to reduce wildfires would reduce PM2.5 - by eliminating the real thing they also eliminate the thing they mathematically claim is 400% more prevalent.
Ocean Conservancy, for example, is raising money talking about microplastics but they also picked up 320,000 cigarette butts on European beaches and shores so they are part of the solution rather than just being a Natural Resources Defense Council that raises money but only provides lawyers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Don't be concerned about microplastics any more than you worry about any other compound that takes a $20,000 machine to detect at trace homeopathic levels. Be concerned about regular-size plastic in cigarettes. France banning cigarettes should result in much cleaner beaches and that will lead to less real plastic pollution. That is a big win for their country, and then the health care cost savings will follow.
NOTES:
(1) Gen Z are already jaded by the sanity and common sense of their elders so cigarette smoking may even go extinct in a generation, and the French government is smart to be able to position themselves to claim they caused the decline, rather than French youth thinking the French government make policy like they are in a bad Jerry Lewis movie and stopping because they see so many dumb adults engage in it.
(2) The wine industry has to be terrified that young people will note that alcohol is also a class 1 carcinogen and stop harming their brains.
(3) They are right to worry, the French are very egocentric. They go on the attack about their personal issues while letting 10,000 senior citizens die in a heat wave because electricity is too expensive to run an air conditioner. When an economic malaise prevented a raise for government electricians as high as they demanded, they cut off the power to the Presidential Palace.
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