Like every year, Public Health France and the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with Health Insurance, launched the new edition of the Tobacco Free Month challenge on Friday November 1st.
But in pharmacies on the Riviera, as everywhere in France, certain references to lozenges, patches, chewing gum and other nicotine-based products to help with withdrawal are missing from the shelves. Pharmacists’ unions denounce supply problems.
“It’s still quite funny to encourage people to stop smoking by offering reimbursement for products that we cannot obtain”reacts Cyril Colombani, pharmacist in Roquebrune-sur-Argens and president of the Union of Unions of Community Pharmacists of the Alpes-Maritimes.
“We are out of stock on the references reimbursed by Health Insurance. The non-reimbursed products, at free prices, and, roughly, one and a half times more expensive than the reimbursed products, we have them”he continues.
“It’s funny for anti-smoking month. It’s much more complicated when it’s anti-hypertensive treatments or other treatments for serious pathologies that we can’t get. Because we are still in the same level of shortage It hasn’t improved since March.”alerts the Roquebrunois pharmacist.
“The real issue is the price”
Among the most requested products to help fight tobacco addiction “patches and small tablets to suck. Some brands are no longer available, then the following month they will come back and others will be affected. This was already the case this summer”notes Raphaël Gigliotti, president of the Alpes-Maritimes pharmacists’ union.
“The real subject is the price. France buys the patches at the lowest price, almost, in all of Europe. So, obviously, we are the last to be supplied, we are facing stock shortages, like all other medicines which are regularly unavailable in France.”deplores the pharmacist from Nice.
Long-term health repercussions
From there to compromising smoking cessation? “Indeed, there are some for whom the brand was very successful and who can tell themselves that they are going to stop, like this patient who could not tolerate certain patches because of an allergy”cites Raphaël Gigliotti as an example.
“People who are moderately motivated can slow them down, confirms Cyril Colombani, who warns: In the long term, it will have enormous health and human costs because we will have more cancers.”
According to estimates from Public Health France, more than 1 million people smoke daily in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, or 29.1% of the population. The prevalence of daily smoking is much higher there than in the rest of France (25%).
While waiting for the missing references to come back into stock, professionals invite candidates to wean “to switch from one brand to another, with the advice of a pharmacist”.
