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.
It’s weird there’s such a push to ban cigarettes while smoking marijuana is becoming more acceptable.
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.
That amount would quite possibly make you unable to continue using weed via Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. Killed at least two folks too.
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Never heard of that before, I will do a little reading. Always nice to learn new things.
You have an article to link to that, that is peer reviewed by a medical board and scientists that this claim is real?
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.
I don’t find it weird at all. Cannabis is less harmful, less addictive, and subjectively, I find it way more fun.
Tobacco (nicotine) is hyper addictive to the point where people gradually get chemically compelled to smoke just about all the time. Arguably maybe caffeine is similarly compelling (I certainly drink caffeine all day), but most people consider caffeine to be pretty benign. Cigarettes are one of the hardest soft drugs to quit.
The long-term health effects of cannabis probably need to be studied more, but prohibition has actually made it harder to do just that. Now that the laws around weed have relaxed a little bit, it’ll be much easier for people to legitimately do the scientific studies needed to show how cannabis affects the human body, how it affects the mind and mood, how additive it is compared to other common drugs, how it is typically used, and what effects legalization has on society compared to decades of criminalization.
The thing that I find truly weird, and actually pretty upsetting, is that I can stop by one of the many dispensaries around here and pick up weed flower or a 10-pack of cannabis gummies for like 15 bucks, but in other parts of the country there are people sitting in jail for less.
I mean breathing in smoke seems is bad for you no matter what.
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The main difference between cannabis and tobacco is that one is addictive and encourages you to engage in the habit ten or twenty times a day.
Setting plants on fire and inhaling the smoke causes cancer. Doesn’t matter much which plant, though there’s surely some that are worse than these two. Neither one is good for you.
Of course, cannabis is often consumed in other forms (edibles, vaping, etc.).
But it’s the ROA with these two plants that cause the most problems. And outside of frequency of use they’re both carcenoginic.
Yeah…I was addicted to pot and smoked daily for 12 years and I beg to differ.
Beg to differ on what part? Addiction?
Yes, cannabis can be habit forming. But as someone who has used both extensively tobacco addiction doesn’t compare to a cannabis habit. One encourages you to light up ten or twenty times a day and smoke a whole cigarette each time, from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed.
I don’t think I’ve smoked ten bowls in a single day in 30 years of blazing.
If you want to argue as to rather or not the burnt carbon in cannabis is carcinogenic I’d have to dig out some research.