Cheap Cigarettes attract more Smokers
Published on December 18, 2009 2:22 PM
Even the increases in tobacco taxes didn’t make the tobacconists to close their cigarettes shops, because they found a new way to save their business. For example French tobacconists started to buy tobacco products from Belgium for about 20 percent less.
In the past Adinkerke was a forgotten, dilapidated village of red-brick houses, just inside the Belgian border with France. But within four years, however, it has been changed into splendor mini-Las Vegas, like a village full of garish signs reading "Smokey River", "Eurobaccy", "Tobacco Alley", "Smugglers' Corner", and "Coronation Street Tobacco Shop".
As it is known, Adinkerke is the closest Belgian town accessible to the French ferry ports, and has the unusual claim to fame of having the greatest number of tobacconists per capita of any area in Europe. This is because literally hundreds of French smokers and British booze cruisers every day make the trip across the border to take advantage of the considerably lower tobacco duty in Belgium. Even this month was opened another tobacco shop in this Las Vegas village, a garish cigarette supermarket called Real Tobacco XL, has lighted a new Battle of Dunkirk (a possible noxious legal row between France and Belgium over the rights of EU citizens to dodge national anti-smoking policies by crossing European borders to buy cheap cigarettes).
The owners of Real Tobacco XL, and four other shops along the Franco-Belgian border, deluged northern France earlier this month with advertising flyers for their new shop. For example they sent a reproducer car, tugging an advertising notice through the streets of Dunkirk promoting the fact that cigarettes were at least €1 a packet cheaper 10 miles away in Adinkerke. The French Government had been able to do nothing, under EU law, about the cheap cigarette shops in Belgium. However they could bring a lawful action against the Belgian firm for breaking an 18-year-old law which bans all forms of tobacco advertising in France.
Patrick Falewee, president of the Dunkirk area tobacco trade association, said: "For three or four years, we have had to watch them, because the Belgians opening more shops which sell cheap cigarettes, and we could do nothing. Over there they have no system of tobacco licensing, anyone can start a tobacco shop. You just buy an abandoned house in a border village and you start selling cigarettes. Now, at last, we can fight back. They have broken the French law against advertising tobacco and we are going to make sure that they are punished for it. We are going to pursue this case to the end."
At one time, France took a relaxed view of smoking, partially because tobacco was a profitable state monopoly. In the past decade French governments have adopted a more health-conscious approach and have imposed a series of steep tax increases on tobacco. The 6 percent tax for cigarettes increased earlier this month. For example the price for a packet of 20 Marlboros (the most popular brand in France) cost €5.60 (£5.10). This is about £1 a packet cheaper than in Britain. It is about €1 (90p) a packet more than in Belgium and at least €2 a packet more than in other EU nations, such as Spain, Italy and Luxembourg.
Recently the British American Tobacco company found that more than one in five of all cigarettes smoked in France were bought abroad. And not only France import cigarettes from other states but many other countries where cigarettes taxes were increased. The same situation exists in Germany, which has very cheap tobacco neighbors in Poland and the Czech Republic. Mr. Falewee of the Dunkirk tobacconists' association, suggested: "It's very simple. We need a proper European health policy, which would harmonize all cigarette taxes in the European Union. As things stand, there is no point in trying to discourage people from killing themselves by raising taxes because they will just clear off somewhere else to buy their cigarettes."
