this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (31 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't need a cigarette to get to work or the grocery store.

Congratulations on discovering false equivalency.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Neither do you need a car in a well planned city.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cool, I don't live in a well planned city and I would have to immigrate out of the country to do so, or wait likely decades for reforms to make their way here. In the mean time, I'll still need a car. I don't need to smoke a cig in public.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Nah mate. Just rip up the streets and relay them yourself, it's so simple smh.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I would need to drive to move to a different city. Checkmate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Shame living in a city absolutely sucks.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Europe is working on it. They will ban the sale of new gas powered vehicles by 2035

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

When this was announced, my opinion was that only hobbyists would even be interested in gas powered cars by 2035. I have to admit I thought the transition to electric vehicles would pick up pace a little quicker more suddenly than it has so far, but there’s still time to have my prediction come true.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Weren't they by 2032 earlier and 2030 before that?

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i will be a cigarette smuggler in this modern age

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Practice not being startled.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It's weird there's such a push to ban cigarettes while smoking marijuana is becoming more acceptable.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I mean breathing in smoke seems is bad for you no matter what.

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