Asked about the characters who smoke on the screen, the Minister of Health Agnés Buzyn promised a “firm action” in this sense, reports Public Senate.
Imagine Belmondo, the Tontons Flingueurs or the films of Claude Sautet or Jacques Tati without tobacco? Their movie descendants may not have the right to grill one on the screen. During the review of the Social Security budget, Senator PS Sarthe, Nadine Grelet-Certenais, was moved by “cultural incentives to smoke,” says Public Senate. “I’m thinking, for example, of the cinema that values the practice.” The League Against Cancer shows in a study that 70% of new French films show a person who is smoking at least once. to trivialize the use, if not to promote it, of children and adolescents, who are the first consumers of series and films, especially on the internet. ”
The Minister of Health Agnés Buzyn, questioned by the senator, abounded in her direction. “I totally agree with what the French senator said about French cinema, and I want it to have firm action on it, and I do not understand the importance of smoking in French cinema,” the minister said. “I spoke to the Council of Ministers this morning to alert Françoise Nyssen, and there will be measures in this direction” as part of the second national plan to reduce smoking.
Not a first
This is not the first time the presence of cigarettes has been questioned. In 2015, former Minister Delegate for Seniors and Autonomy, Michèle Delaunay, proposed that the Evin law be applied to French films. And in 2016, the World Health Organization suggested that governments “apply a classification to films in which tobacco is consumed (…) and the prior dissemination of anti-smoking warnings”.