Tobacco taxes will rise 5% in July, but manufacturers may delay the price hike for cigarette packs in October. Public health advocates protest.
The users could well be the temporary victors of the battle which seems to be engaged between the industrialists and the defenders of the fight against tobacco. Passed in 2012, the law provides for a 5% increase in tobacco taxation from next July. To cushion such measures, manufacturers generally pass these increases on to the price of a pack of cigarettes. But, according to the business daily Les Echos, this increase could only occur in October. “The manufacturers,” the newspaper explains, have decided to cut back on their margins.
“It would be immoral and scandalous to favor a budgetary policy and the profits of industrialists and tobacconists, to the detriment of the health of the French and their children”, immediately reacted Yves Bur, former UMP deputy (Bas-Rhin) one spearheads in the fight against smoking.
“While increasing tobacco taxation is considered the most effective measure to stem the tobacco epidemic, wanting to preserve tax revenues from the sale of tobacco products at all costs is far from a good thing. calculation, ”adds the one who is also president of associations to fight against smoking.
Nothing is acted, comments laconically the Ministry of Budget. But according to Les Echos, the ministry would approve the position of the industrialists. In the first quarter of 2013, tobacco sales fell by 9%. Suffice to say that a new price increase in July would penalize manufacturers!
.
