As part of the Great National Debate, the ecologist MP from Bouches-du-Rhone François-Michel Lambert organized a meeting-debate on tobacco Thursday 4 April 2019 in the National Assembly in the presence of many stakeholders and associations. The 4 tobacco majors Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Seita-Imperial Tobacco et Japan Tobacco International were absent from the meeting.
"WE MUST STOP CONSIDERING TOBACCO MANUFACTURERS AS PARTNERS"
« It is possible to recover each year several billion euros per year ". Thus the MP François-Michel Lambert concluded a debate of 3 hours on the problem of tobacco. He also proposes to complete the fight against smoking by " a fight against the financial losses of an opaque system » as the information website explains counterfeit riposte.
Sensitive to the demands of the yellow vests for greater fiscal justice, François-Michel Lambert was moved to see that nobody questions the organization of tobacco in France. According to Bercy, taxes on tobacco bring a lot of money to the state budget (15 billion euros each year). However, the social cost of tobacco is estimated at several tens of billions of euros each year, the economist Pierre Kopp having calculated in 2015 to 130 billion.
As pointed out recently by François-Michel Lambert in Corse-Matin, who are " how to accept that the cost of tobacco is borne by all social insurers, while only a quarter smoke "? This situation is all the more unacceptable as tobacco companies pay almost no taxes in France thanks to the practice of tax optimization, as Boris Vallaud, the Socialist deputy from the Landes, recently pointed out.
François-Michel Lambert is on his side very firm: « We must also stop considering tobacco companies as partners ». The MP said he wants to tackle two issues that threaten state revenue and public health: parallel tobacco trade and cigarette butt pollution.
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