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.
You’re welcome, thanks for taking time to write up a good counter argument. I agree alot with what you said and also do partially feel that we should legalize everything and let people reap what they sow. I just don’t really know if letting everyone buy heroin from a dispensary would result in a net negative or positive for people in the long run. While peoples lives aren’t gaurenteed to be destroyed after one or a few uses, theres many horrible stories of just that happening, again usually with heroin and some ridiculously addictive opioids. Im not talking about the over dramatized cherry picked DARE stories that you hear in school. Im talking about the very real testimony of SpontaneousH and many others will forever haunt me as an important warning. Its easy to see how something that gives people the biggest dopamine high of their entire life and is also extremely physically addictive ultimately consuming them. The homeless that need to satiate their next high usually aren’t hooked on weed.
So yeah its just a really nuanced and hard thing to be one way or the other for me. There is some arbitrary hypocracy on what constitues soft vs hard drug and I can see an argument for legalizing everything for reasons already stated, but I also think that the ready availability and societal acceptance of things like heroin might be a net negative on the long term health of a society already filled with mental illness and a crushing need for escapism. Its easy to say justify legalizing from a self-interested user perspective, but when members of your friends family and children start legally ODing? Not so much.
Should adults be allowed to do what they want with their health? Yes. But try telling that to the grieving family of a depressed 22yo that overdosed for the 6th time in a year on legal readily available stuff and finally stayed down for good.