After voting to tighten taxes on the sweetest drinks, the Senate did the same on tobacco. The amendment inserted in the Social Security budget (PLFSS 2025) this November 21 aims to approach from 2025 the price of a pack of cigarettes which should have been reached in 2027 without an increase in taxation.
Compared to the increases observed in recent years, the increase remains measured. Without parliamentary modification, the price of a pack of cigarettes should have reached 12.30 euros next year, and 12.60 in 2027. With the amendment adopted in the Senate (by 241 votes to 2), the price of a pack will approach 12 .70 euros from 2025 and will remain at this level in 2027. Remember that the national tobacco control plan 2023-2027 planned a target of a package of 13 euros at the end of the period. The senators hope that this new increase will result in a reduction in the consumption of a product considered responsible for 73,000 premature deaths each year. The tax increase adopted could bring an additional 200 million euros into the Social Security coffers, for which the direct cost of smoking is between 1 and 5 billion euros.
To be applied, this boost must, however, be retained in the final version of the bill, a step which will involve seeking a compromise next week with the deputies. After relying on the debates in the National Assembly, the general rapporteur of the Social Affairs Committee, Élisabeth Doineau (Centrist Union), believes that her “reasonable” modification can succeed. “The proposal we are making will be accepted, it will succeed,” she said.
The Minister of Health wants to stick to the current trajectory
The Minister of Health, Geneviève Darrieussecq, however, opposed the amendment, recalling that all the different actors had already agreed on a trajectory in the latest national plan to combat tobacco. Returning to future objectives would, according to her, be “premature” and “a little complicated”. The former mayor of Mont-de-Marsan (Landes), not far from the Spanish border, also recalled that prices were far from being harmonized at European level.
Senator Bernard Jomier (socialist, environmentalist and republican group), but also Florence Lassarade and several of her colleagues from the LR group, defended in vain the target of a pack of cigarettes at 16 euros by 2027. “What is proposed by the government and the commission will probably have no impact on behavior. It’s pure taxation. If we want things to stop, we have to take a much stronger trajectory,” insisted this general practitioner.
The Senate wants to tax nicotine sachets, the government bans them
A few minutes earlier, the Senate adopted another amendment from Brigitte Devésa (Centrist Union) and Xavier Iacovelli (Renaissance) which will tax nicotine sachets. The amendment also prohibits any marketing of nicotine sachets which exceed the limit of 16 mg. And above all, the sale of nicotine, in the form of sachets or beads, will be prohibited to minors, which is not the case today, unlike combustion tobacco. It will be reserved for the network of tobacconists. Deploring the lack of a legal framework for this type of product, the general rapporteur considered that it was urgent to regulate them. For several months, “pouches”, flavored nicotine sachets, which are all the rage among adolescents, have been the target of public authorities.
The amendments were considered too timid by the minister. “I have decided that we are going to ban these products outright, for everyone. They have no interest other than being dangerous to public health. I would rather ban than tax. I will prepare decrees,” she announced. She made the announcement in October.
“The banning of a product often leads to the development of a parallel market and can prove counterproductive,” warned Senator Nadia Sollogoub (Centrist Union) just before.
