According to Le Figaro, the Ministry of Health is considering banning certain brands of cigarettes. A difficult project to set up and incongruous for anti-tobacco activists.
Are the tobacco companies trying to make people cry in the cottages? In any case, this is the feeling that emerges from reading two articles du Figaro which advances this Wednesday to have dug up the last anti-smoking measure of the Minister of Health. According to the daily, Marisol Touraine would try neither more nor less to withdraw certain brands of cigarettes from sale!
The tenant of avenue Duquesne (Paris) has even started to advance her pawns. Its legislative decree is therefore currently being examined by the Council of State. This would concern the brands whose name the Minister considers promotes tobacco. In this list, we find among others the Gitanes et Gauloises cigarettes, but also the brands Lucky Strike, Vogue, News, Fortuna or the Gold version of Marlboro.
A serious threat for manufacturers
This announced death of certain packages worries the author of the article very much. He thus underlines “the will of the Minister to stigmatize the tobacco companies”. However, the latter are not ready to give up. Le Figaro argues that the bosses of the four main industrialists (SEITA, Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and JTI) wrote on July 8 to the Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, to demand an urgent meeting on the subject. François Hollande and three other ministers, including Marisol Touraine, would also be in copy of the missive. Contacted by Why actor, several tobacco control activists are skeptical. For them, it would be above all a new communication coup from the tobacco industry.
Legally impossible
This is the case of Jacques Le Houezec, independent consultant in public health and tobacco dependence. He confides: “When I saw it go by this morning, I thought of a joke. For a moment, I thought it was information the Gorafi. But above all, I absolutely do not understand the purpose of this supposed measure. In my opinion, it is simply impossible to implement ”.
Asked by 20 minutes, Me Olivier Pignatari, specialized in intellectual property law, confirms this version. This lawyer recalls that “article 13 of the European directive on tobacco products concerns the lack of incentives to consume these products. From this point of view, it restricts its promotion, which French law already does in particular with the Evin law. The terms of the directive, which has been transposed into French law, do not appear to prohibit the use of a mark to identify a tobacco product, ”he thinks. The lawyer then explains that it is perhaps certain very precise names (and not the marks as a whole) which could have to change name.
A communication blow?
For his part, Dr Alain Basset, vice-president of ANPAA (1), does not believe in this announcement: “Marisol Touraine is going to put in place the neutral package and it is already not bad. It would surprise me very much if it went so far as to ban brands of cigarettes just because they have attractive or inciting names, ”he told our editorial staff.
He also underlines that the Minister of Health has, in any case, “never made statements to this effect.” This doctor specializing in public health thinks rather that “the tobacco industry plays at being afraid and that it cries wolf before it hurts”. “I don’t think there is anything behind it other than defending an industry. Ah the poor tobacco companies are attacked, ”he concludes with irony … Anyway, no one apart Le Figaro had obviously not heard of this ministerial project. The mystery of the government’s intentions in this regard therefore remains unresolved.
(1) The National Association for Prevention in Alcoholology and Addictology
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