FRENCH SMOKERS.

Shannon News, 22 February 1924, Page 4

FRENCH SMOKERS.

WOMEN BARRED PROM PUPPING IN PUBUC. Two American, women. sat on ; the boulevard terrace oh -the Cafe ~de la Paix, Paris. To be in .the.mpvement. as they thought," they lighted cigarettes. The. waiter., hastened towards them, evidently very nervous and making, gestures. They, managed., to understand that women .. must not smoke on the street outside a cafe, but can smoke inside. Paris' has not graduated up to women smoking-ex-i cept under cover. i Frenchmen smoke enough--to make up, and since the war it is more and more common to see them smoking a pipe in the street. In Paris that was once thought a sure sign of an' Eng- . lishman, Americans usually smoking cigars in public. With Frenchmen it was mostly cigarettes, and the com. paratively few women who smoke- - apparently to show off —smoke only cigarettes with a showy cigaretto holder. FIGURES LARGE. What is suprising is that the figures of the government monopoly, which sells all the tobacco used in the whole country, show that pipe tobacco sells nearly Ave times as,much as cigars and cigarettes, together. More suprising still,, more, than \ three, times more snuff is sold than cigars, and half, as much snuff as cigarettes. From the streets and cafes one's impressions would -be that- cigarette smoking used up most tobacco, whereas it is not one-seventh of the whole amount of tobacco smoked. The figures of the tobacco monopoly in France are impressive because the monopoly itself is.so big. No tqbapco whether in" leaf or manufactured, can be bought to be brought into France, be brought into France, and no .tobacco can be grown or manu. factured or sold in France except through this State . monopoly.,,. And the monopoly of .matches is, a part tOf it. It might be amusing to..speculate how many individual .matches ..are I struck by Frenchmen in.. a year* hut I it wpuld not be so instructive as these I figures showing exactly how .much tobacco was There-can be no doubt about the figures, because tobacco selling in France is just like post office keeping in the United States. It, is a government job and the government knows how many I postage stamps are made and sold. Tobacco smuggling, mostly in traveller's i pockets is, very little. J TR|ADE GREAT. » In.the year 1922. tobacco of all kindß I and iin all shapes .was sold, in > France to the amount of 116,000.610 pounds, as fpllows: Cigars 1 . ( 2,940,858p0uQa8; cigarettes, 15,691,973 pounds}; chewing tobacco, 2,417,985, pounds:, snuff, 9,610,680 pounds; smoking tobacco, 86,361,635 pounds. Chewing tobacco is indulged in as in other countries, by those, who. can Tj . not well smoke, street car conductors and drivers, for example. A quarter of a pound of snuff is used. by every French man* woman and child in a single year.