Sunday is celebrated the World No Tobacco Day. If the latest data from Public Health France published this week show a steady drop in the number of smokers since 2014, confinement has checked this dynamic. 27% of regular smokers admitted having increased their daily consumption. It is difficult to know whether deconfinement will reverse this trend.
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Five cigarettes a day on average
According to a study by Santé Publique France, the increase in smoking is a direct consequence of stress, boredom and lack of activity. A quarter of smokers would have increased their daily consumption of five cigarettes during confinement. Tobacco was a kind of refuge for them.
The simple act of deconfining should allow some smokers to quickly get rid of these bad habits. For others, it seems more complicated: "I reduced a little during the day," explains Joséphine. "But the problem is that as we have a few more evenings with friends, with the deconfinement, my consumption in the evening has increased." The young woman has indeed gone from five to ten cigarettes a day.
"Every cigarette counts"
"For tobacco, every cigarette counts", says for Europe 1 Olivier Smadja, director of Tabac Info service. According to him, these five more cigarettes per day on average are not harmless: "It can reinstall tobacco as a daily gesture, much more than before. It may be the right time to stop gradually, it is to say go from fifteen to ten, then five and finally zero. "
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Olivier Smadja advises for example to make a list of all the cigarettes smoked during the day. It is then a question of ticking those which seem the easiest to delete and then to continue gradually.