French anti-smoking lobby: Plans for €12 per pack lack ambition

The French government is considering raising the price of cigarette packets in the 2024-2027 period as part of discussions on how to finance the social security budget, while a leading anti-tobacco alliance and some parliamentarians criticised the measure as too lenient.

Read the original French article here. 

The government could raise the price of a packet of cigarettes to €12 from the start of 2024, government spokesman Olivier Véran told RMC on Monday (28 August).

But according to the French Alliance Against Tobacco (ACT), a lobby group that brings together anti-tobacco organisations, this measure is not up to the public health challenge.

“Only a strong and sustained policy will enable us to achieve an effective and lasting reduction in the prevalence of smoking in our country,” Loïc Josseran, ACT president, said in a press release published on Wednesday.

“This scourge still affects almost 12 million French people,” Josseran warned.

While the government plans to increase the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes to €13 by 2027, the ACT want a pack to cost €16 by then.

The ACT would also like to see an increase in the price of other tobacco products, such as roll-your-own tobacco, to discourage smokers of so-called conventional cigarettes from switching to these products.

French parliamentarian Anne Sophie Pelletier (La Gauche, GUE/NGL) agrees.

“The government’s action must go further. A policy of prevention, support for people suffering from tobacco addiction, a contribution from the tobacco industry to the country’s health policy, compliance with the WHO protocol and a ban on the parallel market,” she told EURACTIV.

The idea of increasing the price of tobacco to reduce the number of smokers is not new – it is one of the key recommendations of the World Health Organisation’s MPOWER policy package.

Launched in 2008, MPOWER is a toolkit designed to help countries implement effective public health policies in the fight against tobacco.

“On average, a 10% price increase reduces consumption by 5-8% in low- and middle-income countries and by about 4% in high-income countries,” the WHO wrote in a report on global tobacco consumption published in July.

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12 million smokers in France

There are nearly twelve million smokers in France, or more than three in ten people aged 18 to 75, according to data published by Santé publique France in 2022.

“After an unprecedented fall in daily smoking between 2016 and 2019 (from 29% to 24% in metropolitan France), prevalence has stabilised since 2019,” Santé publique France said in its study.

This reduction in the number of smokers can be partly explained by the increase in the tax on tobacco, which will reach a symbolic €10 in 2020.

“It is also important to counter preconceived notions by pointing out that smoking costs the state far more than it brings in: while taxes generate €13 billion in revenue each year, the social cost of smoking is estimated at €156 billion,” Josseran added.

The social cost of tobacco includes all direct and indirect costs associated with tobacco consumption: health care, passive smoking, deaths, and lost productivity.

Every year, tobacco kills 66,000 people in France, incurring costs of up to €26 billion on the health insurance system.

“Tobacco control policies are essential, but let’s not forget that increasing the price of tobacco serves the industry and, under the guise of public health, it is the tobacco companies that benefit the most,” concluded Pelletier.

Together with Green MEP Michèle Rivasi (EELV/Les Verts), Pelletier chairs an independent parliamentary working group on the tobacco industry, which will resume its work in Brussels in October.

The EU future of novel tobacco products

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Novel tobacco products such as electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco are increasingly replacing traditional cigarettes, which according to the World Health Organisation, cost Europe nearly 700,000 deaths every year.

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