The new national plan for the fight against smoking will not be unveiled until the beginning of the fall, we inform Matignon, but the subject has already been raised in the public debate. By announcing on RTLon September 3, that disposable electronic cigarettes – the “puffs” – would be ” shortly “ banned, but that tobacco taxation would not increase in 2024, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, took the associations and players in the fight against smoking a little by surprise. Some of them are alarmed by a message “ambiguous”.
The ban on “puffs” is not a surprise: the warnings have been multiplying for months in the face of the success of these e-cigarettes with the youngest. “I am in favor of banning ‘puffs’ because they lead a young part of our population to smoking”, had already declared the former Minister of Health François Braun, in May. This is the meaning of the official announcement, Sunday, by the head of government.
With their colorful packaging and sweet aromas, these products target teenagers, even though electronic cigarettes are prohibited for minors. They offer a certain number of puffs for a nicotine level of between 0 and 20 mg/ml. “We can be told that it is not nicotine. But it’s a reflex, a gesture that young people get used to. Then that’s how they go to smoking and we have to stop that”pleaded Mme Thick headed.
“Pediatric Epidemic”
A position favorably received by the Alliance Against Tobacco (ACT), which had raised the alarm on the subject a year ago, denouncing a “pediatric epidemic”as by the National Committee Against Smoking (CNCT), which included the recommendation in a white paper released in the spring.
The shoe pinches, listening to them, in the “tax trajectory” which is drawn in parallel: “We have increased the tax on tobacco [en 2023] and we do not plan to increase it next year”, said the Prime Minister. A course assumed, while the executive makes final arbitrations on the draft budget 2024. “That does not mean that we are not very vigilant about tobacco consumption”, defended M.me Borne, pointing out that “tobacco is 75,000 deaths a year”. Without cutting short the nascent criticisms.
“On the one hand, we say we are closing the door to the entry of young people into smoking with the ban on “puffs”, but on the other, we are leaving it wide open with a moratorium on the taxation of tobacco products. , deplores public health professor Loïc Josseran, president of ACT. It is not with this scenario that we will keep the commitment of a tobacco-free generation for 2030. ” This is however the objective displayed by Emmanuel Macron. The Head of State had also made the increase in the price of the package (to 10 euros in 2017) a campaign promise. “To be effective, the tax pressure must be very strong and constant”, reacts Amélie Eschenbrenner, spokesperson for the CNCT.
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