According to our colleagues on the site Boursorama, between the development of the e-cigarette on the one hand and the fight against smoking on the other, the tobacco industry has struggled for several months.
A GLOBAL FREE FALL OF TOBACCO SALES!
In France, we are witnessing a slow but continuous decrease in the number of smokers, the proportion of them compared to the rest of the French population having fallen from more than 30% five years ago to nearly 25% today.
The objective of the public authorities is to get as close as possible to the 15% mark as is the case in the United States, with an intermediate level to be reached of around 22%. Things are progressing well since in 2018 a million daily smokers crushed their last cigarette. This French trend is far from being an epiphenomenon, as the tobacco industry is struggling to keep its head above water on a global level.
This is evidenced by the stock prices of the heavyweights of cigarettes and the multinationals that are Philip Morris, Altria, Imperial Brands et British American Tobacco. All these tobacco mastodons have seen their respective prices fall in often the most spectacular proportions: 32% less value for Altria's price, 28% less for Philip Morris and even -49% for Imperial Brands and -41 % for British Tobacco.
Never seen in three years. These large companies have somewhat reduced their financial losses through regular tax increases implemented by the states. But what tobacco companies can not fight against is the fall of daily consumers of their products that are fundamentally harmful to health.
THE E-CIGARETTE TAKES THE HAND AND CRUSH EVERYTHING IN ITS WAY!
In the battle that has been going on for several years now between e-cigarettes and tobacco, the round is being won rather easily by the personal vaporizer. In France alone, 
the public body Santé publique France puts forward figures which clearly demonstrate a trend reversal: 600 fewer smokers in 000 alone and 2019 more vapers.
Going back a little further in time, the figures are even more convincing since France has had between 2 and 3 million daily vapers since 2014, many of them being repentant smokers who have completely abandoned cigarettes. Globally, the figures for electronic cigarettes are also impressive: nearly 21 million daily vapers and 98% are former tobacco smokers.
The vaping industry generates no less than $ 10 billion in annual sales. That is as many billions which no longer fit into the coffers of manufacturers and sellers of cigarettes. A sign of the changing times, the Altria group is in the process of making a strategic turnaround, to say the least funny and surprising, which aims to allow it to continue to exist with on the one hand a merger project with its historic rival Philip Morris and on the other hand, the buyback of 35% of the company's shares Juul one of the heavyweights of the e-cigarette.
