Woerth mission on parallel tobacco trade: smokescreen from the tobacco lobby?

On March 24, 2021, the news site Mediapart, through his blog -Les dessous du Parlement- published an analysis entitled: "Woerth mission on parallel tobacco trade: smokescreen by the tobacco lobby?". This analysis highlights the public relations strategies deployed by the tobacco industry with French parliamentarians as part of the Woerth mission. This information mission,led by the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, has the aim of which is to assess tobacco consumption and the performance of taxation applicable to tobacco products during confinement and the lessons that can be learned from it.

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The lockdown periods experienced by France in 2020 had an unexpected consequence on the tobacco market: tax revenues increased by 2 billion euros, from 16 to 18 billion euros.

This does not necessarily mean that the French smoked more during this period. We note that it is in the departments of the border areas of the North, East and South of our country that tobacconists saw their cigarette sales increase the most, sometimes up to 340 % increase on certain products.

Since consumers can no longer buy their cigarettes or tobacco in neighbouring countries where prices are lower than in France – by applying the policies of the states concerned (and after lobbying by tobacco manufacturers in each member state), French smokers have had no other alternative than to return to their local tobacconist. Moreover, multiple articles published by the regional daily press (PQR) make this observation by giving the floor to tobacconists who testify to the return to their business of former customers, and bitterly acknowledge that the latter will once again desert their counter as soon as round trips to Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, Italy or Andorra are once again possible without constraints.

It is in this context that the Finance Committee of the National Assembly launched in January 2021 an Information Mission on the "evolution of tobacco consumption and the yield of taxation applicable to tobacco products during confinement and the lessons that can be learned from it". It is composed of 7 parliamentarians, Eric Woerth, MP for Val d'Oise, President of the Committee, Zivka Park, MP for Val d'Oise, Emilie Cariou, MP for Meuse, Lise Magnier, MP for Marne, Sabine Rubin, MP for Seine-Saint-Denis, Hubert Wulfranc, MP for Seine-Maritime and Jean-Paul Mattei, MP for Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The latter received stakeholders, from public health NGOs to tobacco manufacturers, as well as representatives of tobacconists and other parties interested in the parallel tobacco trade.

Lockdowns shed new light on parallel tobacco trade, raise tobacco companies' responsibility

This fact-finding mission should provide more clarity on the figures relating to the parallel tobacco trade – that is to say all tobacco that is purchased outside tobacconists' networks, even if parliamentary reports have already given fairly precise indications on this subject. Thus, thanks for example to the works from the senator of Hauts-de-Seine Xavier Iacovelli, from the deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône François-Michel Lambert and the European deputy of Reunion Younous Omarjee, it is now established that French smokers buy between 7 and 9 billion cigarettes each year in neighboring countries, cigarettes sold and delivered by the 4 tobacco majors. By oversupplying neighboring countries from Belgium to Spain, in particular with packaging similar to duty free (cartridges in series of 2 to 5 kilograms of rolling tobacco or tube tobacco, etc.), they distort the French tobacco market and cause a drastic drop in tobacconists' turnover (400 million euros per year) and a drop in state tax revenues (5 billion euros per year).

These shortfalls are not only harmful to the activity of tobacconists and to the finances of the State, they are also harmful to public health policies which are circumvented by the low-cost availability of these products which thwart the aims of the price increases applied in France, and the reduction in funds available to Social Security, fuelled by excise duties. This parallel trade is however essential to maintain tobacco addiction at the most profitable level possible for tobacco manufacturers, who do not lack imagination to do so.

The cigarette manufacturers' smoke screen on the 7 deputies of the Woerth Mission

To avoid being implicated by the Information Mission, the tobacco lobby has been deploying a major communication campaign for several weeks to confuse parliamentarians, along two lines: cigarette manufacturers are communicating about the recent explosion in counterfeit tobacco, a way of making others take the blame for the contraband products present on French territory. Philip Morris and Seita-Imperial Tobacco are tackling this, mentioning increases of 200, 300 or 400%. However, only cigarette manufacturers buy tobacco manufacturing machines since they are in a monopoly situation. Machine manufacturers therefore have no interest in alienating these "big" customers. And it is up to cigarette manufacturers to destroy their old machines, or to ensure that they do not fall into the wrong hands. On the other hand, some of the clandestine workshops that have been dismantled so far had been organized by Philip Morris, with devices that were supposed to have been scrapped: the objective? To make people believe that they are victims in order to present themselves as essential in the fight against a phenomenon... of which they are the source.

Then, the cigarette manufacturers increased their media interventions to ask what they called the Woerth Mission not to increase taxes on electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco. This role was played by two associations, France Vapotage, a well-known front for the tobacco industry, and the Fivape, which defends similar or analogous proposals. The debate on electronic cigarettes, and that on heated tobacco, has nothing to do with the purpose of the Finance Committee's Information Mission, which is to understand the weight of parallel trade, and to propose measures to put an end to it. A lobbying technique that is, after all, classic and recalls Charles Pasqua's famous adage "when you're bothered by a case, you have to create a case within the case". The cigarette manufacturers, through Jeanne Pollès, president of Philip Morris France, wanted to talk about the taxation of heated tobacco, whereas a few weeks ago they had asked one of the members of this Information Mission, Line Magnier, to submit an amendment to lower it, which had created a scandal denounced by the Canard EnchainéThe strategy to divert attention from the responsibility of cigarette manufacturers in the organization of parallel trade has long been no longer a mystery, but it is difficult to understand how this will serve the interests of heated tobacco products, while WHO recommends that the same legislation and taxation be applied to them as to traditional cigarettes.

A different position from the Information Mission would not fail to raise questions about its objectivity with regard to industrial interests compared to those of the French State. If the popular expression is that it is possible to smoke like a fireman, without this expression having anything to do with tobacco, it is not said enough how much the cigarette manufacturers have all the makings of the pyromaniac fireman.

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