Insufficient rise in cigarette prices, inconsistent European decisions, the Academy of Medicine denounces the contradictions of the public authorities.
The price of cigarette packs is only expected to increase by 20 euro cents on January 6. An insufficient measure for the Academy of Medicine, which denounces the government’s turnaround. “To further reduce the increase in VAT, by giving up going from 19.6% to 20% as planned, on 1 January 2014, would amount to increasing the price of the package by only 20 euro cents, while the 40 euro cents of increase initially planned were already largely insufficient in terms of deterrence ”, regret the Academicians.
Plus 10% on prices, that’s 8% less sales among young people
They recall that “tobacco is the number one preventable cause of death in the world”. In France, active smoking is considered to be responsible for 90% of lung cancer and 73,000 premature deaths each year in our country.
To fight against this situation, the Academy maintains that “real taxation measures well implemented would suffice to considerably reduce mortality and morbidity due to smoking”. The World Bank has notably shown that a 10% increase in the price of tobacco products is followed by a drop in sales of 4% in the general population and 8% among young people.
The Academy of Medicine also points to the inconsistencies in Europe. She regrets in particular that France “must submit to an injunction from the European Court of Justice requiring it to increase the import quotas of duty-free cigarette packets”. Indeed, by a judgment of March 14, 2013, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that France was not complying with European rules by strictly limiting the purchase of tobacco from another country in the EU. ‘EU.
Since 2006, the French could not bring back from their trips more than five cartons of cigarettes without filling out a document at customs. However, in 2009 the European Commission ruled against this regulation, which it considers inconsistent with the principle of free movement, and in June 2010 it referred the matter to the European Court of Justice.
And since its decision in March 2013, the French can bring back ten cartons of cigarettes. For the Academy of Medicine, this decision “makes pass a deadly poison for an ordinary consumer product”.
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