March 26, 2019.
Since 2016, the number of daily smokers has fallen by 1.6 million. According to the public authorities, this is the consequence of the constant rise in the price of a packet of cigarettes and of the smoking cessation aids put in place in recent years.
1.6 million fewer smokers in France since 2016
On the occasion of the interministerial committee on health which was held on March 25, 2019, Matignon announced the 1.6 million decrease in the number of daily smokers since 2016. They would be like this 600,000 to have quit smoking during the first half of 2018, added to the drop ” historical »Of 1 million smokers observed in 2017, the number of which had increased from 13.2 to 12.2 million.
This is very good news, when we know that tobacco, responsible for cardiovascular diseases but also for many cancers, kills 78,000 people per year in France and would be the cause of the death of more than 7 million people per year in the world, according to the World Health Organization.
Tobacco control measures starting to bear fruit
For the government, this is indeed a victory achieved thanks to all the measures taken in recent years to fight tobacco : continuous increase in the price of a packet of cigarettes, which should reach 10 euros by 2020; neutral package to shock pictures; reimbursement of certain nicotine substitutes by the Health Insurance and increase in awareness campaigns.
That said, if this decrease is commendable and should be confirmed for the second half of 2018 since, according to the French observatory for drugs and drug addiction, “3.4 million people who smoke took steps to quit in 2018 », As we can read in the columns of the Parisian, smokers in France are still more than 11 million and there are strong regional disparities in smoking, in particular because of the level of education and the level of income. A recent study published by the French public health agency showed that “ Île-de-France is the region where people smoke the least, ahead of Pays de la Loire. Conversely, four regions have higher daily smoking rates than the national average: Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Hauts-de-France, Occitanie and Grand-Est. “.
Aurélie Giraud
Read also: Cigarette: do you really know what you are smoking?
