2023-04-30 12:46:20
The first wave of increases took place on March 1. The second will apply on Monday. On May 1, smokers in France will pay 20 to 70 euro cents more to buy their favorite cigarettes. As confirmed by the Customs website, the pack of 20 Lucky Strike Blue will cost 40 cents more, the same for the Vogue L’Optimum Gold or the Winfield red. An inflation that also affects rolling tobacco, whose 30 g pots now cross 15 euros.
In almost ten years the price of tobacco has increased by 70%. In 2004, a pack of 20 cigarettes cost an average of 5 euros. The symbolic bar of 11 euros has now been reached, which makes France one of the countries within the European Union where tobacco is the most expensive after Ireland.
This outbreak will necessarily encourage cross-border smokers to go to neighboring countries to buy their packs there at a lower price. In Spain, it is 5 euros on average and 7.50 euros in Belgium. There is also a risk that consumers will turn to contraband cigarettes, seizures of which have increased by 60% between 2021 and 2022, to reach 650 tonnes last year.
A tariff paid by the government
This high price is fully assumed by the French government, which had announced that it wanted to raise the price of all cigarettes to this level by January 2024. The strategy unveiled last fall is twofold: fight against smoking and index the tobacco prices on those of inflation. Until now, the authorities referred to inflation measured two years ago to set tobacco prices.
This period was reduced to one year by decree in the recent Social Security Financing Act. “It would be quite paradoxical for the rise in cigarettes to be lower than inflation, because that would mean that the price would ultimately fall,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had said.
Tobacco-related expenditure weighs on household budgets. A recent study by the Alliance Against Tobacco (ACT) revealed that, on average, a smoker spent 207 euros per month. A substantial sum which of course does not have the same effects depending on income. Among people living below the poverty line, smoking can represent up to 30% of household expenses, noted the ACT.
No impact on tobacco addicts
On the side of doctors, we welcome this new price increase. “I’m glad! This is clearly the most effective measure to reduce the number of smokers, much more than any prevention campaign,” exclaims Alexandre Duguet, pulmonologist at Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris. But beware, warns the doctor, to have an impact, the increase must be significant: “between 15 and 30%”. We must, he repeats, go further and follow the example of Australia, where the 25-euro package is worth gold.
The latest figures from Public Health France are not good. In December, an unexpected rebound in smoking among women and the least educated was observed, signaling the end of a historic decline. “80% of smokers would like to quit but tobacco is a hard drug, you have to be accompanied”, warns Alexandre Duguet. This is why addictologist Florence Vorspan, of the Fernand-Widal hospital, thinks that this price increase will especially prevent young people from falling into smoking. But it will not have an impact on long-time addicts. “The addiction is very strong. At the hospital, patients manage to get off heroin and cocaine. But not tobacco. It’s the hardest part. »
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