The fight against off-network sales by tobacconists: where are we now?

In France, there is a monopoly on the retail distribution of tobacco products: only tobacconists and resellers who have a special status are authorized to sell these products. Around 80% of sales are made within this distribution network. The remaining 20% correspond to three-quarters of cross-border purchases.[1]. These are not illegal as long as they concern personal consumption within fixed limits. [2]. So the share of contraband strictly speaking remains at a limited level, which can be estimated at 5% of sales. Indeed, a customs estimate placed illegal purchases outside the network between 4.5% and 6% in 2011, and since then these purchases have not increased but have tended to decrease. Counterfeiting, for its part, remains at a marginal level[3].

However, sales outside the legal network are problematic for health, fiscal and financial reasons. Health reasons because having products at a lower price undermines public policies to reduce tobacco consumption, fiscal reasons because of a loss of revenue, and finally financial reasons because the costs of smoking borne by the community are major and contribute to the country's indebtedness.

In this perspective, the establishment of a system for monitoring and tracing tobacco products is supposed to make it possible to identify whether a product has left the legal circuit, at what time and, more generally, to indicate the origin and destination of the product. It would be particularly useful to have data indicating to which markets the products consumed in the bordering departments of the country were intended and thus document the oversupply of these border markets, such as Luxembourg, which is out of proportion with the consumption of the Grand Duchy.

A few weeks ago, the Minister of Action and Public Accounts Gérald Darmanin presented the results of the seizures of tobacco products by the Customs services. [4]. These are announced as increasing due to the mobilization of services. They represented 1% of total sales. Here again, it would be interesting to identify which brands and manufacturers were involved because the contraband products come out of the manufacturers' factories.

This data is not made public. Perhaps because the current tracking and tracing system is simply not independent of tobacco manufacturers.