Smoking lessons are très difficile

A French lung specialist has launched legal proceedings against a school for allowing students to smoke within its grounds on the premise that the threat of a terrorist attack makes it safer to smoke there than outside the gates, according to a story in The Local France.

France’s national state of emergency is said to have put head teachers across the country in a difficult position. They have to address the question of whether students should be forced to leave school property to smoke cigarettes, thus exposing them as potential terror targets, or whether they should they be allowed to smoke on school grounds, even though that has been banned since 2007.

Lung specialist Corinne Depagne was quoted as saying that the move by schools was “supposedly” because of the state of emergency.

“It keeps our children from being killed outside high schools and instead allows them to be killed inside,” she said. “It’s unbelievable.”

In February, unions called for students to be allowed to smoke in courtyards and many schools have given the go ahead for such changes.

Michel Richard from the SNPDEN school administrators’ union was among those calling for the law to be ignored.

“We are always going to fight against smoking, but when it comes to the difference between a Kalashnikov and a cigarette, the risk just isn’t the same,” Richard told Le Figaro newspaper.