In this period of coronavirus, how did confinement affect the consumption of tobacco and alcohol by the French? Public health France published on Wednesday a study with contrasting results. The French obviously reacted in very different ways to these two months of forced isolation.
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Five more cigarettes on average
More than a quarter of smokers increased their daily doses of tobacco. For daily smokers, this represents an average of five more cigarettes. The reasons are multiple, as Joséphine, 30, explains at the microphone of Europe 1: "There is no longer this constraint that one can have at work having to go down each time," declares she, claiming to have gone from two daily cigarettes to ten.
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"My companion also resumed. Then the study arrived saying that tobacco could protect us against the coronavirus, it gave us a good conscience," she concluded with a smile. The 20% of smokers who have reduced their consumption cite as the main cause the closure of many tobacco shops.
A quarter of French people have reduced their alcohol consumption
Regarding alcohol consumption, against all odds, only 10% of French people began to drink more. "It is rather the youngest, those under 50," explains Viet Nguyen Thanh, head of the addiction unit of Public Health France, drawing up their portrait-robot. "Among parents of children under 16, there is probably a cumulative effect: work, looking after children, and sometimes school at home ... For some of them, this explains these increases in consumption. "
65% of French people consider their consumption stable. The 25% of French people who drank less during confinement invoke a fairly simple explanation: without pots with friends or family meals, festive meetings have become rare.
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The use of remote assistance devices would have decreased during containment. Public Health France writes in particular in its report: "The staggering effect linked to the crisis, at the start of confinement, could have led to a drop in the use of these devices." But here again, the effect is more marked for tobacco with a 19% drop in calls received by Tabac info service, between March 2019 and March 2020.
For Alcool info service, after a significant drop in the number of requests between February and March, calls resumed their usual level in April.