Tobacco Free Month begins Tuesday, November 1. A major operation carried out every year to encourage smokers to give up cigarettes. The government has also planned further price increases, of 50 cents in 2023 and 35 cents in 2024. Sales are down with a decrease of 6.6% between 2020 and 2021, but some young people continue to start selling smoke, often in high school. In front of a Parisian bar, Lilian lights a cigarette with her friends. “I started smoking a month ago”, says the young man of 16 years. Surrounded by smokers, he finally broke down: “We had parties and everything, then it just comes like that, I say to myself why not smoke.”
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Starting to smoke by group effect. That’s how Paul, also 16, started. “It socializessays the young man. It’s a real universe that is being created. It’s immediately a talking point or even to seduce girls or whatever. It’s always something that works in the evening. Indeed, it is very bad for my health but it brought me a form of socialization.
Same motivation for Hugo. For the two friends, music videos, films and series where cigarettes are present also play an important role. “Make the characters cool with the cigarette, and not show that he has cancer or something. Like Peaky Blindersperfect example”notes one of them. “I have two friends who said: ‘Wow, it’s so stylish the way they walk…’ Well, it’s not the same thing in real life…”
“Every time it feels like it’s sweet that it’s something good. But when you smoke, it’s hot and it clears your throat. It’s not at all what you imagine.”
Hugo, 16 years oldat franceinfo
In their high school, smoking is very common. “I see the 2007s who didn’t smoke in 9th grade. It happens in high school and bam! It smokes! This is the stage where almost everyone smokes”, explains one of them. This is also the case for Capucine and Alexandra, 16 years old: “As soon as I get out of class it’s not going well I go out to smoke a cigarette it’s a little better.” They started smoking a few months ago without thinking of becoming addict. “I thought I was going to test once and then it would be over or I would be disgusted or once in a while. I didn’t think it was going to be so addictive”confides the schoolgirl.
“I scratch in the street when I have no more money to buy a package so I know I have to stop but it’s not too urgent.”
Young smoker, 16 years oldat franceinfo
Yet the younger you start, the greater the risk of becoming a prisoner of cigarettes. “Tobacco is one of the hardest drugsexplains Bernard Basset, doctor specializing in public health and president of Addictions France. The younger you start, the more risk you take of falling into addiction. There is also another factor, which is that we know that 60% of tobacconists sell tobacco to young minors. There is still a deterioration in the image of cigarettes, including among young people. In 2017, 95% of 17-year-olds agreed that smoking is a danger, according to the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies.