From next week on ten Corsican beaches, it will no longer be possible to take out your pack of cigarettes without risking a fine (from 11 to 38 euros). Serious smokers will have to meet in areas 200 to 300 m wide delimited by flags.
With l’gradual ban on cigarettes on beaches, Corsica is following the movement initiated by several cities in France such as Nice, Cannes and Ouistreham.
The objective is twofold: it is to preserve the environment by cleaning up beaches that are too polluted by waste of all kinds, such as the cigarette butts of unscrupulous holidaymakers. The ban on smoking on the coast is also, and above all, part of a public health prevention concern by combating passive smoking, to which nearly 6,000 deaths per year are owed each year in France. The municipalities which decide to apply this measure also justify the beaches labeled “tobacco-free” by the ambition to dissuade young people from smoking, a potentially more tempting activity when you are at the beach with your friends.
These non-smoking beaches are not to displease the Minister of Health Marisol Touraine. The extension of the ban on smoking in public places to beaches and parks is one of his workhorses.
What do the French think of it? They are rather favorable to this policy. 72% of French people said they were supporters of the ban on smoking on beaches in an Ipsos poll conducted for the Alliance Against Tobacco in May 2014.
