On January 10, 1991, the Evin law dealt a fatal blow to the very virile Marlboro cowboy, invented by the Leo Burnett agency, which made it the best-selling brand in the world for decades. The law of the Minister of Health at the time returns this stereotype to oblivion. So much so that environmentalists are now dreaming of an “Evin climate law” prohibiting advertisements promoting products that are harmful to the environment, such as air travel, cars or fossil fuels.
Considered by many to be a landmark law, the text was not easily adopted. A first attempt to regulate tobacco advertising had already been made with the Veil law of 1976, “but no one respected the defined limits. We had to go further”, recounts today Claude Evin. In fact, his bill considerably hardens the system and attacks, from the outset, communication. “There was no question of continuing to make products with deleterious effects attractive”, he continues. All tobacco advertising is prohibited, while its text frames – without prohibiting it – communication on alcohol, focusing it essentially on the origin, historical or territorial, of the product.
But Claude Evin also undertakes to regulate the social practices surrounding the consumption of tobacco and alcohol. It is now forbidden to smoke in public places, to sell alcohol in stadiums, and you must be 18 years old to buy alcohol and cigarettes. Finally, the price of tobacco comes out of the price index, “even if it will be necessary to wait until 2017 for the price to finally increase in an effective and significant way (package at 10 euros)”noted, in 2021, the president of the Alliance against tobacco, Loïc Josseran, in his article “Assessment of the Evin law, 30 years later” for the Law and Health Institute.
“The alcohol part has been denatured”
It was still necessary to succeed in having the text adopted. Within the government, the “tobacco section” makes some people cough, including Michel Charasse, Minister Delegate for the Budget, who was responsible for the Société d’exploitation industrielle des tabacs et matchettes and welcomed public health professionals with cigars at the mouth, remembers Claude Evin. The latter adds that“In Parliament, it was on the ‘alcohol component’ that the debate was the most complicated, in particular with senators elected in wine-growing regions”. For their part, the communication and media sectors are reluctant. It is true that in 1992 the income from tobacco advertising for the press amounted to 255.3 million francs at the time (the equivalent of 60 million euros today).
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