This was one of Emmanuel Macron's flagship promises in 2017 in terms of public health.
The price of a packet of red cigarettes, the most sold in France, exceeded the symbolic bar of 10 euros in March 2020. But do these successive increases in the price of the packet allow the State to reach equilibrium, to a strictly financial point of view, between revenue and expenditure linked to tobacco?
26 billion euros in 2015
“
Tobacco cost the state 26 billion euros in healthcare in 2015, while taxes brought it 11 billion euros
.
The package should be 45 euros to compensate for all its effects.
10 euros is a step, not an objective,
”explains Professor Loïc Josseran, head of the public health epidemiology department at the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Garches.
26 billion euros, it is therefore the economic cost which includes the expenditure of care (cancers, cerebrovascular accidents other pathologies).
A “drop of water” when compared to the social cost of tobacco: 122 billion euros in 2015, according to the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT).
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According to Pierre Kopp, lawyer at the Paris bar and professor at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, who carried out the calculations for the OFDT: “
The social cost breaks down between the external cost, which does not correspond to a disbursement but to the valuation of what is lost, and that for public finances, more appropriate than the notion of economic cost. Contrary to what the 'tobacco lobby' claims, they greatly exceed the gains
”. Questioned on the subject, a regional union of tobacconists did not wish to comment.
Admittedly, the data on which the 2015 OFDT study is based date back to 2010 and the proportion of smokers has since decreased (29.7% of daily smokers against 24% in 2019 according to Public Health France) but in terms of policy health time is very long.
“
It takes years for tobacco control policies to bear fruit.
Smoking in the 1970s and 1980s is still being paid today. If lung cancer slows down in men, it explodes in women.
The important thing today is that young people do not start smoking.
For this, we know the lethal weapon: the increase in the price of the package which involves taxation for public health purposes,
”adds Professor Josseran.
Hit hard and fast
If he concedes that the government conducted a proactive policy in 2017, efforts are running out of steam: “
Olivier Véran has been absent from the debate since the start of the tobacco health crisis.
It is even more shocking to hear Olivier Dussopt take over the verbatim of the tobacco lobby to position himself against price increases
[on September 29, 2020, the Minister in charge of Public Accounts indicated on BFMTV that there would be no increase tobacco taxation in 2021 because the target of the average price of the package at 10 euros had been reached;
the price however remained indexed to inflation Editor's note]
”.
The doctor asserts that contraband only represents 5% of the market in France.
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The information report "Evolution of tobacco consumption and tax return on tobacco products during containment and lessons that can be learned", co-reported by Eric Woerth and Zivka Park in September 2019, provides more details on the parallel market (legal purchases made abroad and illegal behavior including smuggling). It
is also much more important in the border departments, where it represents nearly 30% of the volumes of tobacco consumed. As a result, the loss of tax revenue generated by the parallel tobacco market is between 2.5 and 3 billion euros per year
”. The fight against street vendors is a priority for tobacconists.
Professor Loïc Josseran recommends knocking hard and regularly on the wallet.
Because if the price shocks are not brutal, smokers internalize the increase.
Same story with Pierre Kopp: “
Agnès Buzyn was proactive.
In return, we must finance weaning systems and be uncompromising on attempts to circumvent the Evin law, especially on social networks
”.
On RTL in September 2019, the former Minister of Health claimed that 1.5 million French people had quit smoking in two years.
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On the industrial side, the State would not be a winner either.
"
It is a net loss from a fiscal point of view (apart from tobacconists) because there is no longer a production site in France
", concludes Professor Josseran.
Obviously this economic approach is partial.
Some 75,000 people die in France each year from tobacco, according to the OFDT.
