“MY LADY NICOTINE”

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 September 1923, Page 7

“MY LADY NICOTINE”

SMOKING IN FRANCE. The increasing sway that Aly Lady Nicotine exercises over the blench people is indicated in the latest issued statistics, says the Parisian correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph.” The value of the tobacco smoked during the first half of the present year exceeded by nearly 76,000,000 francs that of the first half of last year, the respective totals in round figures being 845,000,000 and 769,000,000. The most noteworthy increase took place in the month of June, when 26,500,000 francs worth more tobacco was smoked than in June, 1922. One does not see outward evidence among the French of any appreciable growth in favour of the pipe, though it is nowadays much more common in the home than it used to he. The cigarette continues to hold its supremacy. H, requires time foxforeigners to acquire a taste for Frencil tobacco, and consequently, apart from the sale of the State monopoly, an enormous trade in English cigarettes is done in Paris. It is different with French cigars, which are greatly appreciated by Anglo-American visitors, both on account of their sound quality and cheapness. At present the Government department in charge of the tobacco monopoly is doing its best to encourage the consumption of some new brands of cigars, cadging in price from 40 centimes to 70 centimes. A very lolerable cigar of popular, as distinct, from connoisseur, taste is obtainable in France for the equivalent, at the present rate of exchange, of Id.