French tobacconists against raising price of cigarettes

The Confédération des buralistes, which represents the interests of tobacco retailers in France, has come out against a Senate report that recommends raising the price of a pack of cigarettes to €25 by 2040.

France, where a pack of twenty cigarettes costs around €12.50, is one of the six countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with the highest prices of a pack of cigarettes.

“In Europe, only the UK and Ireland have higher prices”, the Senate Social Affairs Committee said in its report adopted on Wednesday (May 29).

Despite the high price, France remains one of the countries with the highest number of daily smokers, and every year tobacco causes 70,000 premature deaths.

The report noted that “the policy of reducing smoking has failed”, and recommended increasing the price by at least 3.25% every year between now and 2040, which would mean raising the price of a pack of cigarettes to €25.

The tobacco retailers went up in arms, arguing that French tobacco taxation already leads the way in Europe.

“The Confédération des buralistes condemns the remarks made in this report, which aim to minimise the impact of contraband and counterfeit tobacco markets in the country,” said their press release issued on Friday (May 31).

According to the Senate, in France, the prevalence of smoking decreases when the price increases by more than 4%.

The tobacconists replied that “the reports in the memo are unacceptable and demonstrate a blatant disregard for the consequences of price, both on the country’s public health and on the network’s economic situation”.,

The World Health Organisation (WHO) also considers raising the price per pack to be one of the most effective measures, and has deplored the fact that “high tobacco taxes are rarely implemented”.

France’s 2023-2027 National Tobacco Control Plan, presented in November by former health minister Aurélien Rousseau, currently plans a price of €13 per pack by 2026.

For tobacconists, efforts should focus on the fight against the black market, i.e. smuggling and counterfeit cigarettes, which account for between 30% and 40% of cigarettes consumed in France.

However, this figure is disputed by anti-tobacco association ACT, the directorates of public finances and customs, and the Observatoire français des drogues et des tendances addictives (ODFT), who put the figure at around 6%.

In Brussels, tobacco taxation will be on the agenda during the next term of office, following June’s EU elections, since the current Commission has not reviewed the Tobacco Products Directive and the Tobacco Taxation Directive, dating from 2014 and 2011 respectively, as originally planned.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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