Paris (AFP)

The number of smokers stopped falling last year in France, rebounding even among people with the lowest incomes, "in a context of social crisis", according to figures released Wednesday by Public Health France.

In 2020, more than three adults aged 18-75 in ten declared to smoke at least occasionally (31.8%) and a quarter daily (25.5%), indicates the health agency before World No Tobacco Day, Monday 31 may.

This marks a halt after several years of seeing the proportion of smokers drop from 34.5% to 30.4% between 2016 and 2019, and daily smokers drop from 29.4% to 24%.

Public Health France (SpF) qualifies the figures for 2020 as stabilizing, because "the variations in the prevalence of smoking and daily smoking compared to 2019 are generally not significant".

On the other hand, the public body notes "an increase" in smoking "among the third of the population with the lowest incomes", to 33.3% of daily smokers against 29.8% in 2019.

In contrast, in the highest income third of the population, only 18% report daily smokers.

Another worrying signal: "in 2020, 29.9% of daily smokers had attempted to quit for at least one week in the last 12 months", a proportion "which is" significantly lower than in 2019 (33 , 4%) ".

These data come from the barometer carried out each year by SpF, a major survey on health issues conducted by telephone among 14,873 people between January and March 2020 and then between June and July of the same year.

- To manage stress -

The health crisis linked to Covid-19 and its economic and social restrictions "do not seem to have had an unfavorable impact", since it is at the beginning of 2020, between January and March, that the "increase" is observed, followed by "stabilization" after the first containment.

Among those surveyed from January to mid-March 2020, 32.7% said they smoked, but this proportion fell to 30.5% among those surveyed in June and July 2020, returning to the level of 2019 (30.4% ).

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This stabilization may have a link with the health crisis, believes Loïc Josseran, president of the Alliance against tobacco and professor of public health at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin, because "with each hard phenomenon for the population, we observes an upsurge in addictive behavior ".

With the "successive drops" in recent years, "we had done the easy part", now "it will be complicated to continue" to decrease because it will be necessary to reach "the most fragile", less sensitive to prevention messages, a he explained to AFP.

SpF does not decide on the reasons for this development, but observes that it "takes place in a context of social crisis in France which started at the end of 2018, with the + movement of yellow vests +", which "strongly affected the populations of lower socio-economic level ".

“However, among the less privileged populations, cigarettes could be used to manage stress or to overcome daily difficulties, despite the increasingly important cost of this product,” says the agency, citing a French study from 2009 who analyzed why modestly smokers are paradoxically less sensitive to policies to increase tobacco prices.

Since 2017, the government has significantly increased tobacco taxes to reduce the price of the package to 8 euros in March 2018, then around 10 euros in early 2020, with the stated aim of reducing consumption.

The level of smoking "remains high in France compared to Anglo-Saxon countries" such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, which had only 14% of smokers in 2019, however there too there are strong disparities depending on the level of income and education, observes Santé publique France.

75,000 deaths per year in metropolitan France are attributable to tobacco, according to a study published in 2019, or more than one in eight deaths.

To achieve the objective of the health authorities of a "tobacco-free first generation by 2030", Public Health France invites "reinstate a downward trend" and "further strengthen the fight among the most vulnerable populations facing to smoking ", to take account of" very marked "social inequalities.

© 2021 AFP