After two years of stability, the price of cigarettes will now follow inflation and reach 11 euros per pack in two years, the government has decided, pleading for the fight against smoking. “I confirm that the price of the pack will increase with inflation. It would be quite paradoxical for the increase in cigarettes to be lower than inflation”that would mean that “finally, relatively, the price would drop”declared Monday, September 26 on RMC / BFMTV Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on the occasion of the presentation of the draft budget for 2023.
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The social security financing bill (PLFSS) presented to the Council of Ministers on Monday provides that the average price of the package, “today from 10.15 euros”will increase by “50 cents in 2023 and 35 cents in 2024”which the “will increase to 11 euros”Bercy told AFP. “This increase is going to be relatively small and insignificant”reacted on franceinfo Yves Martinet, president of the National Committee Against Tobacco (CNCT).
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The government also announces “new adapted tax scales” for products that are now less taxed, such as rolling tobacco and heated tobacco. “What we want are more significant and repeated increases of around 1 euro per year”proposes the pulmonologist Yves Martinet, namely a “actual price increase taking inflation into account”.
“Two thirds of smokers want to quit smoking. The message to give is: stop smoking, you will have a 13th month and, you heavy smokers, it will give you a 14th month tax free and tax free.”
Yves Martinet, pulmonologist and president of CNCTat franceinfo
The pack of cigarettes will rise to 10.50 euros in 2023 then to nearly 11 euros in 2025. Unsurprisingly, cigarette manufacturers have risen up against a “considerable tax increase” according to Jeanne Pollès, president of Philip Morris France which produces the Marlboro brand, the best-selling in the world. It will penalize “the poorest French people” and “aggravate the rise in trafficking in cheap fake cigarettes”, she told AFP. British American Tobacco (BAT) evokes a “gift to organized crime”according to a spokesperson, predicting the appearance of “new counterfeit tobacco factories in France”.
The leading cause of preventable death, tobacco kills some 73,000 people in France, with a direct cost of 20 to 26 billion euros per year for health insurance and an overall “social cost” (deaths, illnesses, production losses , but also spending on prevention, repression and care, for the State) estimated at 120 billion by the French Observatory of Drugs and Drug Addiction. Taxation on tobacco, it brings 13 to 14 billion euros per year to the State, according to Bercy. A year ago, a parliamentary report estimated the loss of tax revenue at 3 billion euros, linked to illegal tobacco consumed in France – estimated between 14% and 17% of consumption.