GALA.fr: La loi Evin a fait une nouvelle victime. D’après le Parisien, l’ancien président de la république ne fumera pas sur la couverture du premier volume de ses mémoires. Jacques Chirac (fumeur jusqu’à la fin des années 80) devait apparaître une cigarette à la main, sur le premier tome de sa biographie. Seulement, l’entourage de l’homme politique à l'origine de la lutte contre le cancer en France a finalement refusé cette photo, par souci de légalité...
Le premier tome des mémoires de Jacques Chirac sera publié avec un retard d'un mois. D’après le Parisien, le prédécesseur de Nicolas Sarkozy va devoir changer l’illustration du livre. En cause, une photo le représentant en train de fumer.
Le cliché en question mettait en scène Jacques Chirac (fumeur jusqu’en 1988) avec une cigarette à la main. Seulement, l’entourage de l’homme politique, à l'origine de la lutte contre le cancer en France, a refusé cette photo par souci du respect de la loi Evin (relative à la lutte contre le tabagisme et l'alcoolisme).
En France, la loi proposée par Claude Évin en 1991 interdit la publicité pour le tabac et l'alcool. Et Jacques Chirac n’est pas le seul à avoir fait les frais de ce texte. On se souvient qu’en juillet dernier, le beau Alain Delon voyait sa cigarette gommée sur les affiches du parfum Eau Sauvage de Dior. >>> | Mardi 15 Septembre 2009
TIMES ONLINE – BLOG: Jacques Chirac, the last President, has become the latest victim of the anti-tobacco zeal that prevails these days in France. Chirac's publishers have just delayed for a month the release of the first volume of his memoirs because his staff objected to a cover portrait in which he is holding a lit cigarette.
A dangling clope was a trademark of the younger Chirac, as it was of most French stars of the last half century. The picture is a nice atmospheric shot from the 1980s of the pensive prime minister of the time. It would not have made much sense without the cigarette, though smokes have been purged in recent years from pictures of Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon,Jean-Paul Sartre,Albert Camus, Charles de Gaulle, André Malraux, the late writer-politician, and Jacques Tati, the late film-maker.
"The release of the book has been put back because of the cover photograph," said Elizabeth Franck, spokeswoman for the NiL publishing house. "Photographs of the young Chirac smoking are quite common. Everyone has seen them (but) when Mr Chirac's staff saw the photo on the cover mock-up, they preferred to change it for a portrait of his face alone," Franck told us.
The bon vivant Chirac, 76, stopped appearing in public with cigarettes in 1988 and made cancer research one of the main priorities. His presidency ended with a smoking ban spreading in public places. Nicolas Sarkozy, his successor, is a private smoker. He enjoys one fat Cuban cigar a day in the Elysée Palace -- but never touches alcohol.
The Chirac decision has been attacked as another case of excessive obedience to the anti-smoking fervour which took hold in Chirac's years in the Elysée, from 1995-2007. "Political correctness has struck again", said Le Parisien.
The doctoring of pictures has become an issue in the cultural world, with critics accusing publishers, advertisers and museum directors of air-brushing history in the way that banished Soviet politicians were once erased from Kremlin portraits.
It's pretty clear that historic pictures are not covered by the 1991 anti-tobacco legislation, known as the Evin law. This prohibits "all propaganda or publicity, direct or indirect, in favour of tobacco and its products."
Géard Audureau, chief of the Non-smokers' Rights campaign organisation, called the Chirac cover-change silly. "This is an image of the young Chirac from a time when he smoked. It does not shock me to see a smoking president because it was the reality in that period," he told us. "It is an old-fashioned picture which does not promote tobacco." >>> Charles Bremner | Monday, September 14, 2009
