While an international conference has been held since Tuesday on “Tobacco or Health” in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), the deputies of the Social Affairs Committee are also immersed in the theme of the fight against smoking. They spent the day Wednesday reviewing the amendments tabled as part of the health bill regarding cigarettes. And there would be a good hundred, according to Le Figaro.
It is a real front of deputies who rise up against the health scourge of smoking. In France, approximately 90,000 people die each year from tobacco. A figure recently reassessed in the light of scientific work which has linked cigarettes to 7 new diseases.
While much has been said about Marisol Touraine’s plain packaging proposal (which she would like to see implemented by mid-2016), other proposals are even more radical. Like that of the PS deputy Jean-Louis Touraine who calls for an outright ban on the sale of cigarettes to all people born from 2001!
Interviewed by Le Figaro, the MP explains: “If we want a tobacco-free world, we cannot do it with those who already smoke because it is extremely difficult to get rid of this addiction. By targeting those who are now 14 years old, we are reaching a category of the population which a priori has never smoked and therefore is not dependent”.
Withdrawn from consideration by the Social Affairs Committee on Wednesday, the amendment will still be submitted to the vote of the deputies at the end of March, “after a reworking of the explanatory memorandum”, explains Jean-Louis Touraine.
Michèle Delaunay, Socialist MP too, tabled no less than 16 amendments. She believes, according to Le Figaro, that the anti-tobacco system is insufficient.
The price of the pack of cigarettes is also put back on the carpet. Why not further increase the price of tobacco, since it has now been proven that this is an effective measure, if not the only one, to get smokers to quit?
According to Marisol Touraine, the price of cigarettes “is already very high in France and the choice was made not to focus on this aspect”. Polite way of explaining that it is difficult to take measures which would displease the tobacco companies, or which would lead to a drop in revenue for the State? Because as Le Figaro reminds us, today taxes and VAT on tobacco bring in 14 billion euros to France. A manna which it seems difficult to do without.
In Abu Dhabi, last night, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg announced the financing of a special fund, intended to help developing countries which wish to put in place anti-tobacco measures. This money will be intended more particularly to help the countries which must face the lawsuits brought by the tobacco companies. Uruguay, the first country in South America to ban smoking in public places, was sued by Philip Morris for no less than 25 million dollars, for “violation of trade agreements”.
