I saw a poster in a bar when I was in Brittany recently campaigning against the ban - which is more of a campaign against it than we had here! Like most silly laws in France, it will go unenforced and ignored.

It is the Catholic influence, I think. France was never subjected to the Puritan Revolution with its prurience,disapproval and love of banning other people's fun.

I doubt whether the Huguenots associate French catholicism with tolerance.

My French housemate, who is a student and thus spends more time boozing and smoking than most, tells me this law is unenforced and unenforcable.

The worthy thing about the French is their tendency to simply ignore laws they don't like, and damn the government. I don't think they have the equivalent of the British zealot local authority officer who makes it his lifes work to spread misery wherever he goes armed with clipboard and pen and a big sheaf of rules.

I doubt whether the Huguenots associate French catholicism with tolerance.

Indeed, but then the protestant Calvinists of Geneva were not exactly party animals, either. Calvin had opponents burned at the stake.

I think the religious point, at least in more recent times, is a cultural thing. Puritanism has been associated, not always fairly, with the Protestant strain in western Christianity, although goodness knows there are plenty of puritanical Catholics.

The French will make toast of the puritanical smoking ban. However, there has been, and continues to be, some spirited resistance on this side of the channel, with a National Smoking Day protest on 31st December:

www.freedom2choose.info