In France, the drop in cigarette sales is very real

The drop in tobacco consumption is very real. If from a health point of view, this news can only be praised, this decline in purchases in the traditional network is a net loss for public finances, because 80% of the price of the cigarette pack is taxes. A huge financial windfall for the state of almost 13 billion euros collected in 2024, which, in parallel, uses the fruit of this taxation to maintain the care systems of the victims of smoking and do prevention. Recall that, the first cause of avoidable mortality, tobacco kills nearly 80,000 people each year in France.

According to customs, whose services are responsible for collecting data, it sold in France in France 1.3 billion cigarette packs against 1.5 billion in 2023. The withdrawal has continued since the start of 2025. The drop in sales has been a constant for thirty years. The more the years go by and the less we buy from the tobacconists, to the point of seeing the decline appear with two figures (-12%).

According to the observatory of drugs and addictive trends, over the last ten years, the share of French people who smoke every day has increased from 30 to 23%. The movement has accelerated since the early 2000s with the continuous increase in dissuasive prices. Is it enough to explain the drop in cigarette sales among traditional tobacco merchants? No. The black market and purchases abroad also explain part of the withdrawal of purchases identified on French soil.

If you go to Luxembourg, Italy or Spain, where the taxes are much lower, the price of the package can be divided by two, knowing that the average price of the package in France today is 12 euros. Not to mention the smuggling that automatically distorts official figures.