France to quit making cigarettes as last factory prepares to close The last remaining factory making cigarettes in France is set to close by the end of 2023, the site’s owner told its employees this week.
Issued on: 01/10/2023 - 09:08
The Manufacture Corse des Tabacs (Macotab), on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, is the last to manufacture cigarettes in France since the closure of another in the centre of the country in 2016.
Around 30 employees work at the Corsican site, down from 143 in the early 1980s.
The factory makes cigarettes on behalf of industry giant Philip Morris, which recently signalled it was ending the contract.
Contraband packets have also cut into legal sales, according to the factory’s owner Seita, the former French state-owned tobacco monopoly that is now part of the British company Imperial Tobacco.
Seita had already closed France’s last tobacco processing factory in 2019, in the traditional growing region of the Dordogne in the south-west.
Some former factories in Marseille and Lyon have found new as cultural and exhibition spaces, or even a university.
Kicking the habit Efforts by authorities to curb smoking and its health hazards, not least by prohibiting puffing in restaurants and cafes and banning ads for cigarettes, have prompted sharp reductions in cigarette sales in recent years.
Smoking remains the main cause of avoidable deaths in France, according to Santé Publique France health agency, which estimates 75,000 tobacco deaths each year.
The bulk of European production these days is in Germany and Poland.
What the FUCK is a French man supposed to do after sex now?
Wait, my vision of a man wearing a striped shirt and a beret smoking a cigarette is not actually what French people are like?
Not anymore. It’s all changing for the worse. I hear they’re coming after the baguettes next. The mimes are speechless.
No no that’s still accurate, it’s just that the cigarettes are imported now.
Jokes aside, I swear they really do walk around with baguettes in hand. 3 days in Paris, sitting at multiple cafes, and we saw it in the morning, at lunch, in the evening. Men, Women, Children, well dressed, poorly dressed (for a Parisian), black, white, brown, blue, green, every combination in between, we’d see someone walking around with baguettes. I’ve lived in multiple cities and visited even more in the US and Europe. Never have I seen so many people walking around with bread!
People eat bread and pick it up from their local bakery then walk home with it instead of stuffing it in the trunk of their SUV to drive two blocks. What do you expect.
You’re right of course, nor was I making any judgements. I loved seeing it! It made me smile. As did the quintessential “scowling french waiter” standing 15ft in front of us on the other side of the side walk, with apron and and all. And despite a previous poster’s comment about their infamous cultural rudeness, these slightly overweight, non-french speaking Americans didn’t experience any overt rudeness at all. If they were bad mouthing us quietly in french they did a great job of hiding it. [shrug]
I would visit Paris again in a heartbeat; though I would never fly Air France nor pass through CDG if you paid me. Such a horrible experience. Guess we’ll fly BA into LHR and take the chunnel or a ferry for the experience.
They also live up their their infamous cultural rudeness.
The bagetttes make my poor mouth sore after a couple of days as well. I much prefer the breads in northern Europe.
When I went to Paris this summer, lots of locals were smoking. The odor of Paris was urine and cigarettes.
Kicking the habit Efforts by authorities to curb smoking and its health hazards, not least by prohibiting puffing in restaurants and cafes and banning ads for cigarettes, have prompted sharp reductions in cigarette sales in recent years.
While I support bans in restaurants and cafes, I don’t support prohibition, which is what a lot of Western nations are aiming at. We learned our lesson during the alcohol prohibition years in America, and for the last 70 years around the world with marijuana prohibition. The social effects are far worse when forcing recreational drugs underground. Educate support addiction programs, but don’t ban.
Ban use in public in general. I don’t want to be forced to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke in front of a train station or waiting at a traffic light any more than in a restaurant. People can do what they want at home but constantly having to deal with drug addicts polluting the air around me shouldn’t be accepted.
I don’t need a cigarette to get to work or the grocery store.
Congratulations on discovering false equivalency.
Europe is working on it. They will ban the sale of new gas powered vehicles by 2035
We learned our lesson during the alcohol prohibition years in America.
We’re not America and we’re not banning alcohol, nor are we banning the drug in tobacco that people smoke it for.
So it is an entirely different scenario to either American prohibition or to cannabis.
Yep, all the while alcoholism is at all time highs, so much so that they had to rebrand it as social drinking. Alcohol, still allowed to advertise every where, and can sell fruit flavors, but tobacco…nope. Tobacco should be left alone at this point. The majority of people don’t smoke, like like 7% in the USA, this includes all tobacco users. Prohibition just creates blackmarkets and death.
Alcohol, still allowed to advertise every where, and can sell fruit flavors, but tobacco…nope.
Tell that to the vape industry. Nothing more disgusting than walking through a cloud of shit that smells like cotton candy.
Yeah, a kid was just kicked off my sons siccer team for vaping in school - someone failed somewhere that he was able to develop a habit
Alcohol, still allowed to advertise every where
Actually alcohol advertising is pretty limited in Europe due to EU wide regulations and some countries have even stricter rules, ranging from “not in public spaces” to straight up “no alcohol advertising at all”
Also I would point out alcohol is a big cusine thing and has been for centuries and you’re nuts if you’re upset schnapps are a thing but not strawberry cigarettes. Also like, flavoured vapes totally exist?
I don’t think either should be regulated like it is, but the idea with tobacco was that kids are drawn to it but somehow not alcohol with their fruity flavors. It’s a bullshit double standard. And flavored cigars are what they went after…no kid is smoking an $8 acid cigar.
Same thing: tax the hell out of both. Vice taxes are too low. It may not help current users but it should help over time by discouraging new users.
I do drink alcohol sometimes, so yes I’m advocating more pain on myself. It won’t effect me since as an occasional drinker, it just won’t add up, but lets try anyway. I have kids who will need to make such decisions
Vice taxes are insane already. You sound like you have no clue how much taxes is pulled already from tobacco and alcohol taxes.
What should be taxed to hell is fast food and sugary shit. Obesity is our number one killer now and has been for a while.
I agree … Prohibition doesn’t work.
But making it very difficult and expensive to maintain an addictive habit would much better.
The same would go for alcohol. If alcohol was more regulated, more controlled, not sold in public houses or businesses (including bars) and the price increased, taxed more with taxes going towards addiction treatment, education and medical assistance for those affected by alcohol … less people would drink alcohol.
If you have a culture where you freely allow businesses to promote, sell and provide an addictive substance that provides little to no health benefit … especially if it makes high profits … companies will want to encourage a culture of making their substance widely acceptable.
Alcohol looks acceptable because it’s promoted, advertised and normalized everywhere. If it weren’t, less people would be drinking.
Advertising of smoking is highly regulated and discouraged now … smoking is no longer normalized … which is why people smoke less.
Now that would be fascinating. Britain has a deeply entrenched drinking culture. Regularly getting drunk to the point of vomiting and passing is very common. The managers where I work all live away and stay in hotels when they visit my town every other week. They all go out and get wasted on a Wednesday night (with company funds, totally legitimately) and often don’t come into work Thursday so they can drive home in the afternoon when they sober up. All totally normal.
Ban advertising, pub drinking and cheap supermarket booze. Inflate the price and run a massive anti-drinking campaign. It’d be interesting to see how long it’d take for the tide to turn. Also, if we end up going the way of America during prohibition with illicit alcohol flooding the streets, how long that would take to die down and for people to accept it.
But it’ll never happen. No politician is even going to think about limiting the availability of alcohol in this country. They’d be so unpopular it’d be political suicide for them and their party.
A lot also drink alcohol because it is about the only thing that can help them relax after a shitty day of work in this society.
Inflating the price will have plenty of people on edge, all while those managers can still go on a alcohol bender, just at every 4 weeks instead.
But making it very difficult and expensive to maintain an addictive habit would much better.
Harmful to others habbit.
Alcohol looks acceptable because it’s promoted, advertised and normalized everywhere. If it weren’t, less people would be drinking.
Also alchohol is a drug, that creates dagerous behaviour. And more addictive than some banned drugs.
It’s weird there’s such a push to ban cigarettes while smoking marijuana is becoming more acceptable.
People simply smoke a lot more cigs than pot per day. If you smoked 10-20 joints a day for many years your lungs and body would be wrecked too.
That amount would quite possibly make you unable to continue using weed via Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. Killed at least two folks too.
I don’t find it weird at all. Cannabis is less harmful, less addictive, and subjectively, I find it way more fun.
Tobacco (nicotine) is hyper addictive to the point where people gradually get chemically compelled to smoke just about all the time. Arguably maybe caffeine is similarly compelling (I certainly drink caffeine all day), but most people consider caffeine to be pretty benign. Cigarettes are one of the hardest soft drugs to quit.
The long-term health effects of cannabis probably need to be studied more, but prohibition has actually made it harder to do just that. Now that the laws around weed have relaxed a little bit, it’ll be much easier for people to legitimately do the scientific studies needed to show how cannabis affects the human body, how it affects the mind and mood, how additive it is compared to other common drugs, how it is typically used, and what effects legalization has on society compared to decades of criminalization.
The thing that I find truly weird, and actually pretty upsetting, is that I can stop by one of the many dispensaries around here and pick up weed flower or a 10-pack of cannabis gummies for like 15 bucks, but in other parts of the country there are people sitting in jail for less.
The main difference between cannabis and tobacco is that one is addictive and encourages you to engage in the habit ten or twenty times a day.
Setting plants on fire and inhaling the smoke causes cancer. Doesn’t matter much which plant, though there’s surely some that are worse than these two. Neither one is good for you.
Of course, cannabis is often consumed in other forms (edibles, vaping, etc.).
But it’s the ROA with these two plants that cause the most problems. And outside of frequency of use they’re both carcenoginic.
Those “control freaks” only exist in your imagination, look at the reality around you. Almost everyone’s up for legalization of cannabis.
Tobacco users however are a huge burden on national health programs (ok except on the US, where people are just expected to cough up all their family’s money before they die idk)
You drinking alcohol doesn’t affect my health. You smoking cigarettes does - even in your own 4 walls, unless you have a few hundred meters distance from every neighbor. So I do support the idea of completely forbidding smoking - but I concede it’s not very practical and can’t really be done. Forbidding it in public spaces and restaurants / bars however, and whereever smoke will be blown to people who don’t like it? Yes, at least the legislation to enforce that would be very welcome.
Thank you armchair analyst, but governments will move on ignoring you, we dont like lung cancer sorry
The taxes collected through cigarette sales more than cover their costs on the healthcare system. Don’t act like governments actually care about the health of their citizens, either, it’s just about production maximization and writing policy to help their friends.
Ask yourself why full tobacco bans are becoming so popular now, instead of any other time in the past 50 years since we learned how harmful smoking is. It’s because big tobacco companies have pivoted and cornered the E-Cig market now, which is much more profitable than traditional cigarettes. The only difference is that small/independent farms can’t grow disposable vapes like they can with tobacco.
Ask yourself why full tobacco bans are becoming so popular now, instead of any other time in the past 50 years since we learned how harmful smoking is. It’s because big tobacco companies have pivoted and cornered the E-Cig market now, which is much more profitable than traditional cigarettes
You have the cause and effect on this backwards. More and more laws were passed restricting smoking, so number of smokers went down, so companies pivoted to vaping.
You’re advocating for a habit that has no benefit to society because “look what happened before!” It should be banned for sale. Full stop.
If we prohibited the sale of all addictive drugs with little benefit to society (no benefit is debatable) we’d have to ban coffee and alcohol too.
Nobody mentioned addiction, which is irrelevant since smoking only has disadvantages. You created a strawman argument then you doubted the proven benefits of coffee and red wine, which is even part of the mediterranean diet. You argue in bad faith and you are also uneducated, make us all a favour and leave.
If tobacco/nicotine itself isn’t banned then this could potentially get a lot of chainsmokers to switch to a relatively healthier form of smoking like dry herb vaporizers.
Maybe to people who don’t know anything about smoking. Some substances are less addictive than others to smoke thus theres less compulsion to put smoke into your lungs constantly. Dry herb vaporization smoke is also absolutely measurably safer than traditional combustion smoke as its far less hot and no ash, carbon tar, burned fuel byproducts from lighter or wick, none of that is getting in the smoke only the low vapor point plant oils and terpenes you actually want in there. Thus making it much cleaner and less full of carcinogens. You can really feel the difference on the lungs. Also the smell isn’t nearly as bad either almost unnoticable which is a win for non-smokers in the area.
The idea that a chain smoker who goes through 2 packs a day will suffer the exact same degree of health issues as someone who vaporizes half a gram of weed once or twice a day is silly.
Why is that? Genuine question. Is it just a strength/purity thing?
I don’t dry herb vape, but I do vape cannabis oil.
Ironic that back in the 50s physicians used to prescribe smoking as a health benefit! 🙄🤣
It helps against one disease, as far as I know (believe me I’m a doctor.).
The disease is ulcerative colitis.
Fun fact: Alcohol improves symptom of one disease too. The disease is called essential tremor.
That’s a little outdated info now, isn’t it? UC is helped by the nicotine. So why not get prescribed a patch instead?
