The number of smokers stopped falling last year in France, according to figures released Wednesday by Public Health France.
It even rebounded among people with the lowest incomes "in a context of social crisis".
In 2020, more than three adults aged 18-75 in ten declared to smoke at least occasionally (31.8%) and a quarter daily (25.5%), indicates the health agency before World No Tobacco Day, Monday 31 may.
This marks a halt after several years that saw the proportion of smokers drop from 34.5% to 30.4% between 2016 and 2019, and daily smokers drop from 29.4% to 24%.
33% daily smokers among low-income people
Public Health France (SpF) qualifies the figures for 2020 as stabilizing, because "the variations in the prevalence of smoking and daily smoking compared to 2019 are generally not significant".
On the other hand, the public body does note "an increase" in smoking "among the third of the population with the lowest incomes", to 33.3% of daily smokers against 29.8% in 2019. By contrast, in the highest income third of the population, only 18% say they are daily smokers.
Another worrying signal: "in 2020, 29.9% of daily smokers had made an attempt to quit for at least a week in the last 12 months", a proportion "down significantly compared to 2019 (33 , 4%) ”.
No "unfavorable" impact of the Covid-19 crisis
These data come from the barometer carried out each year by SpF, a major survey on health issues conducted by telephone among 14,873 people between January and March 2020 and then between June and July of the same year.
The health crisis linked to Covid-19 and its economic and social restrictions "do not seem to have had an unfavorable impact", since it is at the beginning of 2020, between January and March, that the "increase" is observed, followed by "stabilization" after the first confinement.
Among those surveyed from January to mid-March 2020, 32.7% said they were smokers, but this proportion fell to 30.5% among those surveyed in June and July 2020, returning to the level of 2019 (30.4% ).
Too many cigarettes in the movies
This stabilization may have a link with the health crisis, believes Loïc Josseran, president of the Alliance against tobacco and professor of public health at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin, because “with each hard phenomenon for the population, we observes an upsurge in addictive behavior ”.
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In addition, the League against cancer, which denounces this Wednesday in a survey of 150 films the omnipresence of tobacco in French cinema, is worried about this over-representation during the first confinement, with 66% of 18-24 year olds who indicate spending more time in front of films or series, whatever the medium (TV, computer, tablet, smartphone….), according to the association.
"The League has fiercely denounced the promotion of smoking in French films for more than 15 years," said its president, Professor Axel Kahn, in a press release.
He denounces the “campaigns as aggressive as they are insidious among the youngest” of the tobacco industry.
Between 2015 and 2019, “90.7% understand at least one event, object or speech related to tobacco: people smoking, presence of ashtrays, cigarettes, character talking about tobacco….
", Notes the League.
Touch "the most fragile"
With the "successive drops" in recent years, "we had done the easy part", now "it will be difficult to continue" to decrease because it will be necessary to reach "the most fragile", less sensitive to prevention messages, a he explained to AFP.
SpF does not decide on the reasons for this development, but observes that it "falls within a context of social crisis in France which started at the end of 2018, with the movement of yellow vests", which "has strongly affected the populations of lower socio-economic level ”.
“However, among the less privileged populations, cigarettes could be used to manage stress or to overcome daily difficulties, despite the increasingly significant cost of this product,” says the agency, citing a French study from 2009. who analyzed why modestly smokers are paradoxically less sensitive to policies to increase tobacco prices.
75,000 deaths per year
Since 2017, the government has significantly increased tobacco taxes to reduce the price of the package to 8 euros in March 2018, then around 10 euros in early 2020, with the stated aim of reducing consumption.
The level of smoking "remains high in France compared to Anglo-Saxon countries" such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, which only had 14% of smokers in 2019, with however there also strong disparities depending on the level of income and education, observes Santé publique France.
75,000 deaths per year in metropolitan France are attributable to tobacco, according to a study published in 2019, or more than one in eight deaths.
To achieve the objective of the health authorities of a “tobacco-free first generation by 2030”, Public Health France invites “reinstate a downward trend” and “further strengthen the fight among the most vulnerable populations in the face of smoking ”, to take into account“ very marked ”social inequalities.
