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.

  • SpeedLimit55@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    People simply smoke a lot more cigs than pot per day. If you smoked 10-20 joints a day for many years your lungs and body would be wrecked too.

    • kbotc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That amount would quite possibly make you unable to continue using weed via Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. Killed at least two folks too.

      • Evie @lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You have an article to link to that, that is peer reviewed by a medical board and scientists that this claim is real?

        • kbotc@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          https://www.cmaj.ca/content/194/46/E1576#:~:text=Andrews’%20study%20was%20the%20first,at%20least%20one%20CHS%20attack.

          It’s a real disorder, but we’re just recently getting to the point where it’s even legal to study cannabis use so data is sparse. What we do know is that there’s a subset of heavy users that develop a persistent vomiting disorder and cessation of cannabinoids clears it up. My brother in law’s brother has it and he has to be careful with some chemicals in foods that mimic cannabinoids even.