Picture the archetypal French person. He or she is probably smoking, insouciantly. About one in five French adults smokes every day and 73,000 die each year from a related illness. France imposed a full ban on smoking in public places in 2008. Now the French health minister, Marisol Touraine, wants to go further and make France the first European country to ban e-cigarettes in public places. This is a foolish idea that must not be emulated on this side of the Channel.
Figures compiled by Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), a charity that campaigns against tobacco use, show that the proportion of adult smokers in Britain using e-cigarettes has increased sixfold since 2010, from 3 per cent to 18 per cent. The two most