France to quit making cigarettes as last factory prepares to close
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.
Nope. Theres always going to be health affects from putting any kind of smoke into your lungs, no matter what. But on a relative scale of health its definitely much more safe in the long term than chain smoking cigs with all their carcinogens and addatives. Smoking is not a healthy pass time, but some people enjoy it/ do it for medical reasons and are willing to accept inherent risk. Just like how drinking a beer or a shot of vodka once a night after work is still not great for your health long term wise but is objectively much better than binge drinking 24/7.
would it be better if everyone magically stopped drinking and smoking? Yes absolutely. But we live in reality and not lah-lah land, people should be free to make their own decicions on what to ingest as responsible adults, and trying to stop them from doing things with prohibition just encourages them to do it underground with unregulated products from the friendly neighborhood dealer, sales which the state/government doesn't see a cent in income tax to. At least taxing the shit out of recreational drugs helps keep social services running and keeps otherwise productive members of society out of jail.
Thats not to say legalize everything, hard addictive substances like opioids and heroin and such that have an almost certain destructive impact on anyones life after one use should not be allowed. But leave it up to the individual and tax the lighter less addictive things like tobacco, alcohol, weed, psychadelics, all of which can be used responsibly occasionally in a social setting without a huge risk of addiction and the last two of which can even provide long term psychological benefits/healing when used correctly in the right enviroment.
Keeping opiates illegal just causes the exact problems you're discussing with the other substances, if not more. Opiates are addictive and potentially dangerous yes. So are most drugs, even the ones you mentioned. Yes it could be argued psychedelics are less harmful, there's no real risk of overdose and minimal risk of addiction. I'd also rather live in a world where those are legalised if that's all, rather than the one I'm in now where my country denies cancer patients cannabis but millions of tax payer's pounds are wasted policing idiots drunk in alcohol every week. But let's not pretend psychedelics are completely harmless.
Acting like so called "hard" drugs are some kind of black magic powders where one time trying them will have you hooked for life, ready to sell your own Mother as minced beef just to get your next hit is the same crap people used to say about the other drugs you've listed, including weed. Plenty of people consume them and lead productive lives.
Consenting adults shouldn't be stopped from putting anything they want to into their own bodies. It's called freedom.
If I start repeatedly slamming my own head into a wall, an action that could eventually kill me, as long as I own that wall or have the permission of the wall owner and I'm not getting noise complaints from the neighbours I can legally do it as much as I like.
But I can't legally take the risk of accidentally overdosing on fentanyl. Despite the fact that legalising the drug would mean I can get my hands on product produced in labs which are licensed and vetted so I can see the strength of the substance and be fairly certain of its purity, making overdose infinitely less likely.
What kind of sense does that make?