It's really the end for smokers. Gitane-loving France is to follow Ireland, Spain, Ireland, Italy and dear old NZ in banning smoking in most public places.

Cafes and restaurants will need designated areas with extraction fans to suck out all the foul puff.

France apparently passed some of the toughest anti-smoking legislation in Europe in 1991, though you could have fooled me.

France's history with tobacco goes back more than four centuries. Nicotine is named after Jean Nicot, a 16th-century ambassador to Portugal who took tobacco leaves imported from America to Catherine de Medici as a cure for her migraines.

Nice one John.

President Jacques Chirac used to get through three packs a day. Some 12m people in France still smoke, 20% of the population, though if they're like the people I know and have seen, they seem to be very occasional puffers - what The Tipping Point calls "chippers" who don't get completely hooked. Perhaps not: 70,000 people die each year in La Republique from smoking-related diseases.

Expect a little resistance. Salon reckons the French see anti-tobacco lawsuits as a huge threat to their culture.