Café Americain

France is expected to ban smoking in all public places, including bars and restaurants, sometime during the next year. The ban, which probably will be imposed through an administrative decree extending earlier restrictions, would allow businesses to let customers smoke in "hermetically sealed areas, furnished with air-extraction systems and subject to extremely rigorous health norms." Although this option may be prohibitively expensive in most cases, it makes the French policy more tolerant than California's ban, which ostensibly permits separately ventilated smoking rooms but effectively prohibits them because state regulators never wrote the ventilation standards. Also, I don't think the French government has gotten around to banning outdoor smoking yet. But once French cafés go smoke-free, can a foie gras ban be far behind?