new increase in tobacco prices this January 1

Among the changes on January 1, 2025, there is this new increase in tobacco prices. Plus 50 cents on average. Some packs of cigarettes now cost more than 12.50 euros and it even reaches 13 euros for Marlboros. Always with the same objective: to reduce smoking in France.

Among the changes on January 1, the price of cigarettes will increase by 50 cents on average at the start of 2025. A packet of Marlboro, for example, increases to 13 euros. But will this new price increase be enough to dissuade smokers? For Doctor Frédéric Le Guillou, pulmonologist, president of the Santé Respiratoire France association, invited this Wednesday on RMC, it is a strategy that is paying off.

“Tobacco price increases are part of the strategy to reduce consumption. A strong increase makes it possible to significantly reduce young people's adherence to smoking and encourage those who smoke to quit,” he indicates.

A loss of life expectancy

At the same time, a British study tells us that smoking a cigarette represents around 20 minutes less life expectancy. 22 minutes less for women, 17 for men. So, according to this study, if you smoke 10 cigarettes a day, and on January 1, 2025, you stop, then in just one week, you will have avoided losing an entire day of life expectancy. One year off, and that's fifty days saved.

This study was carried out using data from two institutes which have been working for decades on mortality linked to smoking in England. On average, researchers say, smokers who never quit lose a decade of life. And it is not their final years that are impacted, those in which chronic illnesses and disabilities generally occur.

Rather, smoking encroaches on years of healthy life. In other words “a 60 year old smoker will generally have the profile of a 70 year old non-smoker”. The study nevertheless underlines that the effects of cigarettes can be reversible provided that smoking is completely stopped.

A harmfulness always underestimated

For Caroline who drinks coffee on the terrace, cigarette in hand, there is no question of stopping. “I’ve already gotten back into sport so cigarettes might be for 2026,” she quips.

For Jean-Christophe, after 6 years of smoking, it will be good to stop this year.

“I realize that it’s stupid. Besides, I have my brother who died of lung cancer, he was a heavy smoker,” he confides.

Jo and her partner have been thinking about stopping for a long time. But it is not this study that will make him take the plunge. “I don't want to rely too much on that but I'm aware that it's bad for my health,” he points out.

In 2025, smokers still underestimate the harmfulness of tobacco, according to Juliette Hazart, addictologist.

“It is the substance that kills the most, ahead of alcohol, ahead of heroin, ahead of cannabis. It costs on average 75,000 deaths that could have been avoided per year,” she says.

She emphasizes that it remains possible to regain the years of life expectancy lost by stopping smoking permanently.