Stogie News: Smoking Bans Hit 007, French
4 Oct 2006
The paternalistic busy-bodies who are pushing smoking bans can now claim two of their more unlikely victims:
James Bond
In an interview with Parade Magazine, Daniel Craig, the current 007 and star of Casino Royale, expressed his frustration with the movie’s producers for prohibiting Bond from smoking cigars in the film “in order not to send a bad message to young fans.†Noting the obvious hypocrisy, Craig quipped:
“But here’s the reality, I can blow off someone’s head at close range and splatter blood, but I can’t light a good Cuban.”
In the 2002 Bond flick, Die Another Day, 007 actor Pierce Brosnan smokes Cuban cigars in multiple scenes.
Previously, we’ve covered anti-smoking zealots’ successful efforts to censor the cigar out of Winston Churchill’s mouth and to remove smoking from Ben and Jerry cartoons.
The French
Meanwhile, France – unitil recently a relatively smoker-friendly country – is bracing for a paternalistic smoking ban. The AFP reports:
After five months of consultations with doctors, tobacconists and trade unions, the 30-member committee decided in favour of a blanket ban on public smoking from September 2007 at the latest — though it held open a possible delay till summer 2008 for some establishments.
Smokers could only indulge their habit in “hermetically-sealed areas, furnished with air extraction systems and subject to extremely rigorous health norms,” according to a report which was to be formally adopted later Tuesday.
The report also advised the government to resort to a decree to enact the ban, rather than a law — which it warned could prove cumbersome in the months leading up to April’s presidential election.
Moves to prohibit public smoking in France reflect the changing mood across Europe — where several countries led by Ireland have introduced similar measures — as well as the growing propsect [sic] of litigation by victims of passive smoking.
With France falling to the anti-smoking Nazis, it’s once again an opportune time to note the striking similarity between Hitler’s smoking policy and the policies advocated for by today’s health fascists.
Patrick Ashby
Co-Founder & Editor in Chief
Patrick Semmens
Co-Founder & Publisher
George Edmonson
Tampa Bureau Chief
Maybe if we censored anything vaguely inappropriate from every book, movie, or television show we could better control the actions of the populace. Free speech simply gets in the way of government-imposed "utopias".
What's next… no bond girls?
Leave Pussy Galore out of this!
Man oh man,
When 007 can't light up anymore, it's a sure sign the apocalypse is coming.
It almost makes one paranoid to think there are these "forces" trying to take every last pleasure of individual liberty away from us.
I myself have moved far off into the Japanese countryside – and smoke my stogies as I please now :).
Guess I'll be boycotting the next Bond flick.
Keep up the good work!
Sincerely,
James in Japan
P.S. In my cigar tribute video, Churchill's stick is still visible:
http://www.cigartribute.com