Gauloises

Gauloise (plural Gauloises, singular and plural pronounced similar to Goal-was with an almost silent L) is a cigarette of French manufacture and provenance.

Traditional Gauloises were short (a standard size for cigarettes prior to the 1950s), wide, unfiltered and made with dark tobacco of Syrian and Turkish provenance with very little North American Bright or Burley tobacco, which imparted a lighter quality to the American brands. For this reason, and due to the "casing" used on the tobacco during its manufacture, Gauloises had a peculiar and strong odor which some non-smokers have likened to burning tar, burning tyres, burning camel dung or the smoke of what King James, in A Counter-Blast to Tobacco, called "that pit which is bottomless". Even smokers who are unfamiliar with Gauloise's Levantine charms are unapt to say "blow a little my way" to the Gauloise smoker, who is more than most smokers invited to leave the room except in France and sometimes even there.

The traditional Gauloise packet (cf http://www.tobaccoads.org/advertisement/gauloise/gauloises-caporal-gaul01-02.html) was a peculiarly French blue in that like the blues used in French (Nice) artist Yves' Klein's work, the blue contains little compromise with other primary colors. It is illustrated with what looks like a Germanic helmet, paradoxically given France's long antagonism towards Germany during the zenith of the popularity of the Gauloise.

This is because modern France's founding myth emphasized the way in which the "Gauls" resisted Roman hegemony and were in fact a Nordic tribe.

During its zenith between the World Wars, the smoking of Gauloises in France, like the smoking of Camels in the USA, was considered patriotic and an affiliation with the "heartland" values of France, as represented by the cigarette smoking *poilu* at Verdun and the resistance fighter during the Vichy occupation of France. As was the case world-wide during the wars, smoking represented, as "the soldier's breakfast", not ill-health and moral turpitude but in fact the willingness to sacrifice the ordinary comforts of daily life to defend the fatherland, and to share both solidarity and cigarettes with workmates or trench-mates at the crisis.

Smoking Gauloises was patriotic in another way. This is because many of the profits from sale of Gauloises flowed to the Regie Francais Tabacs, a semi-gorvernmental corporation charged with both controlling the use of tobacco, especially by minors, and directing its profits towards socially beneficial causes.

However, France's state monopoly has today been superseded by the European Union of which France is a member, and as a result, its traditional policies have been replaced by the goal of eradicating smoking. In particular, Gauloises, which like Camels come today in a variety of downsized and filtered brands for the entry-level smoker (brands known to encourage smoking and to increase the number of cigarettes smoked), now bear black and white EU warnings which destroy the former aesthetic appeal of the former packet. This is in fact a good excuse for the smoker, addicted to Gauloises, to give up, an excuse similar to the increasing prohibition on smoking in bars: for once smoking becomes a barbarism of opening a pack so clearly marked, or littering the sidewalk outside a bar, it's raison d'etre is gone.

Famous Gauloise smokers include Jean Paul Sartre who died from a combination of illnesses probably brought on in part by smoking, and Pablo Picasso who lived a very long life.

In France itself, one may purchase most versions of Gauloises including the traditional version, albeit they will bear warnings as noted, at any cafe with the sign "Tabac", and in that cafe, smoking is permitted.

In the USA, Gauloises are available only at full-service tobacconists, a dying breed, and not, typically, at the discount cigarette outlets popular in rural areas. They may also be found in French specialty shops and cafes such as the Cafe de la Presse in San Francisco.

Some American students have affected Gauloise smoking because of its philosophical and artistic flair, for the same reasons of self-definition that other flaming youth smoke Indian Sher Bidis.