kenderina, in France a public place is defined as any place to which the public is admitted, whether it is privately owned or not. Hotel rooms, offices, shops, train stations are all public places.

...because more so than anything else it is a safety issue. I don't want to die in a fire because some idiot smokes in bed...it is also, agreeably less so, a health issue. My lungs should not be polluted by the carcinogens floating around the room from previous smokers nor should I have to smell the left over smells...the more we make smoking unacceptable behavior, the better off we're all going to be.

Sorry if I said something I didn't want to say. Maybe you think my English is better than it is. I'm not talking about a owner doing just what he wants. I'm comparing it with the restaurant owner etiquette question. Why this is acceptable and other things are not ? this is what I don't understand.
The Spanish law (Civil law) says that a hotel room has the same treatment as your home for the days you are in. So, if I smoke (or not) at home why I can't do it on a hotel room (or has to bear with other's smoking if I don't smoke at home) ? That's what I was talking about. Whether if you smoke or not, the hotel room is your home for the time you are paying for it. It's just not fair if you are unable to do what you want to do at your own home without doing any harm to others. I've never smoked in a place where I cannot do it, never, I'm respectful with that, don't need a law to enforce it. But I think no one has the right to tell me what I do at home. And a hotel room is my home.

Thanks , kerouac, I didn't know that

<I think no one has the right to tell me what I do at home. And a hotel room is my home> - this i agree with as long as the same room is used exclusively by smokers - it may not be in the hotel's interest to do that and thus on business reasons i believe they should be able to restrict smoking in rooms if they want.

xyz123 makes a valid point however about safety - i was in a hotel where there was a fire recently in France and had to evacuate at 2am - i always take some kind of simple smoke mask with me now.

hey, Bob- we were in Switzerland last year and really had a time with the smoke, but it seemed young people were worse than older ones. Do you foresee any big changes there? btw..my husband just got back from Scotland and loved the clean air. They were able to sit at a bar and do business all night, something you can't do in a smoking area when you have sensitivity.

It must be admitted that smoking has become more and more fashionable with young people everywhere in Europe as older generations decree that it is detestable. The French government had quite a bit of luck at reducing smoking when it was agressively raising the price of cigarettes (now at about $6 a pack), but as major elections approached, it wimped out and the number of young smokers is rising again.

Yes and even instituting an age limit for buying tobacco - until a few years ago i believe there was none - French kids are said to smoke at one of the highest rates in Europe - my French son is now 23 but when he was in lycee all - i mean all his friends smoked as did he.

French teens also supposedly have the highest rate of cannabis smoking in Europe - i've seen figures as high as about 49%.

Teens like to go to cafes near their schools and smoke - perhaps making cafes non-smoking could reduce the rate a bit. I've walked by the local lycee in my son's town and cafes just after school are inevitably a haze of smoke.

Yet the French, especially French women, have amongst the highest longeveity rates in the world - think how high they would be if so many didn't smoke!

...and let's not forget that the cannabis figures are in the country with the most restrictive legislation in this part of Europe. If it were not such a "forbidden fruit," I'm sure that it would not be so attractive. After all, the French youth have low alcohol consumption figures (particularly for 'binge drinking') simply because there is no taboo in France about drinking.

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After all, the French youth have low alcohol consumption figures (particularly for 'binge drinking') simply because there is no taboo in France about drinking.
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i do agree that the french do have relatively low levels of binge drinking (although lately there are many stories of its rise in france among young people).

however, drinking in the UK is certainly not a taboo and we have a HUGE binge drinking problem. so bad that the average town centre can be a no-go zone for civilised people during certain nights of the week.

Well don't know about French youths in general but when my son there was a teen-ager all his friends binge drunk every weekend and even on other days.

He said they each would drink a fifth or more of tequilla or whiskey just to see who would be the last standing.

I bumped into him at Carrefour one day when he was 16 and he had a cart load of hard liquor of all types - "for the party" that night. The age to buy such hard liquor in France is 18 but he now tells me he was buying booze from about 14 years old at the supermarket and no one ever cared.

If he and his friends are at all typical then i think French kids are following their English cousins and binge drinking ('getting pissed&quot more and more.

PalenqueBob, I do agree with that too. Smoking rooms have to be smoking only and no-smoking always no-smoking and yes, I also agree they can go no smoking for business reasons. What I don't agree is that they go no smoking for a law enforcement, I don't think that can be applied to hotel room, it for sure can be to common rooms at the hotel.
I also had a fire in London at 4AM in the morning..but it was because of a TV exploding on an empty room. Not every fire alarm is because of cigarettes By the way, I was on a non-smoking room, I was with a friend that doesn't smoke.

Again, with hotels it's an economic issue. Their insurance rates go down if they have all non-smoking rooms. Also, most hotel chains report about a 95% request rate for NON-SMOKING rooms and that's why several of them are going to all non-smoking. The other 5% of requests can go somewhere else, for now.

In NYC, the ban "worked" because simultaneously restaurant and bar staff enforced the ban, worried about the fines they would have to pay, AND the city steeply raised the price of cigarettes with a new tax. As kerouac said, cost is a big deterrent - it sure was for my BF who quit smoking that year.

Mayor Mike now wants to ban trans fats. This is certainly the slippery slope some posters have mentioned... I'm not sure government edict is the way to go here.

(I will say that NYers are as stubborn and set in their ways as Parisians are. I never thought the ban would be implemented here - and yet, NYers now bundle up and head out into the cold for their butts without batting an eyelash. And others docilely move to another bar stool if one has been marked off as a smoker's with a simple coaster over a glass or a nod from the bartender - this from a population that would have thought nothing of arguing along the lines of "you snooze, you lose" in the pre-ban days!)

For the record, I have never been a smoker even during the time I lived in Paris; I don't care to be in cigarette smoke; BUT I strongly opposed the cigarette ban in NYC. Am I happier that I can breathe more easily? Sure. Am I glad that restaurants and bars seem to be doing as well as ever? Certainly. But to mandate that some citizens are relegated to the sidewalk for partaking in a *legal* activity certainly seems constitutionally fishy to me. There was never a public vote on this ban; it simply came into being. Are donuts and french fries next?

There are many *legal* activities that one cannot do in a public place, this is a non issue. Concerning reductions of freedom, I'd be a lot more worried about certain recent news from the Congress.

Yeah, but it's not like this was a legal activity to be done in the privacy of one's own home - one day you're allowed to smoke in bars, the next you're not - with no say from the public via a vote.

That's the way I felt when T-bone steaks and calf's brains were banned in France due to mad cow disease. However, by consuming either, I would have been putting only myself in danger, not my entourage.

It seems to me that governments have always -- or frequently -- pushed around minorities. By definition minorities do not have political power. In the 1920s in America we can ban Irish, Jews, and African-Americans from jobs and hotels. What are they going to do? And since I am none of those things why would I complain. It isn't my rights that are being infringed upon. There are multiple examples of this.

Same with smokers. I'm not a smoker. Their product is dangerous to me. It stinks. I don't like it. Therefore they are entitled to no rights. And everytime a city or state or country strips them of even the slightest bit of rights we should applaud this and say yes, the ban is working. Just like the ban on Irish and Jews in the 1920s "worked" too. So, by all means, let us all applaud the French for taking this bold and decisive step of banning smoking in public -- if that is what they decide to do.

Here is a thought. If tobacco is truly as harmful as people say then why not ban it, make it illegal? If just by using the product in the way it was meant to be used is deadly then it should be banned.

A poster above wrote that the slippery slope argument was embarrasingly stupid. They are correct. We ought to see absolutely no connection between NYC ban on smoking and the coming ban on trans-fat. And no connection between the city of Davis, CA (the first city in CA to ban smoking outside!) and their ban on wearing obnoxious perfumes. And those in Germany in the 1930s were foolish to see any connection between first the loss of one right and then another and then another until complete de-emancipation had been achieved. Slippery slope? Nah!

I think a reasonable society ought to be able to come up with reasonable regulations. Owners of bars could chose to be smoking or non-smoking. Or perhaps bars could be non-smoking during eating hours and smoking later in the evenings. I think that as adults we can make our own decisions about accepting risks. But clearly I am in the minority.

SDA, here's the fallacy of your argument. Being a Jew or Irish isn't something you can avoid, and isn't something that harms other. Smoking in public is both things. So banning smoking from public places isn't discrimination. Talking about slippery rope, according to your argument, anything should be allowed because doing otherwise would be discriminatory.

While I disagree with the Irish/Jewish/Smoker analogy, I do agree with a recent statement that "If tobacco is truly as harmful as people say then why not ban it, make it illegal?"

If it's not banned outright, then I think a bar owner should have a choice and so should his customers. If you're trying to protect the employees, then what about the exemption that some states had/have for owner-run places with no employees?