Among the odd details that catch my eye are this: historic French elevators –with ironwork outer doors and inwardly folding, windowpane cabin doors– that seem absurdly cramped for more than a single passenger, sometimes even bearing traces of a long-gone elevator operator, outfitted with an ashtray.

An ashtray! At one time in France, people smoked in the elevator. And in this long-ago time, the practice was considered so ordinary or expected that elevator manufacturers included ashtrays in their cabins.

Times have changed.

Smoking has been outlawed in the workplace, restaurants and cafés, bars and nightclubs, and public places generally. And French people follow the rules, for the most part.

Taxes on tobacco products have climbed steadily over the years, pushing the price of a pack of cigarettes above five euros.

Tobacco advertising has been prohibited on, and has disappeared from, television, radio, print, or billboards. French law basically prohibits advertising that promotes tobacco, directly or indirectly.

The French press has been agitated this week over recent decisions by Metrobus, which manages advertising for the RATP, the Paris transit authority. As anyone who has ever taken the Paris métro can attest, Metrobus manages a huge quantity of advertising space, much of it below ground.

Two decisions made the news. The first concerned an ad for a retrospective of French comic filmmaker Jacques Tati. The poster originally showed Tati smoking a pipe. At Metrobus's request, the pipe was replaced by a whirligig (a children's toy). The second involved a poster for "Coco avant Chanel", a biopic starring Audrey Tautou that opens this week. Metrobus asked that the poster, showing Tautou (as Chanel) with a cigarette, be replaced by another image, sans cigarette. In both cases, Metrobus said that it made its decisions not to run afoul of a prohibition on indirectly promoting tobacco.

From the indignant tone of the media coverage, you'd think that the Paris transit authority was handing out free packs of cigarettes to pre-teens. Many commentators have decried the decisions as absurd or stupid. Others have enlisted the parliamentarians behind the ad ban (some twenty years ago) to explain that this wasn't at all what they meant.

I'm puzzled by the outrage. What's wrong with Metrobus having standards and practices, and refusing certain advertisements?

And I can't help but wonder whether the organizers of the Tati retrospective or the makers of the Chanel biopic aren't secretly happy about the indirect publicity (for their offerings, not for tobacco).