Brussels – It’s practically the first thing you see. As soon as you cross the threshold of the Gare du Nord, cigarette sellers are already there, packets of every colour in hand, ready to ask if you want to buy. Everything happens casually, without fear: the “parallel” market for the most classic of tobacco products in France is the rule.
Some say it is growing because it is fuelled by overly strict tax policies and the fact that penalties for selling or trafficking illegal cigarettes remain much lighter than for drug trafficking. One factor that explains the many unauthorised street tobacco sellers is immigration: in Paris, “the bubble burst in 2015,” the year of the asylum seeker crisis, explains Loïc Guézo, a resident of the La Chapelle neighbourhood since 2002 and president of the Demain, la Chapelle neighbourhood association. “Many arrive to stay temporarily. Before leaving, they do irregular jobs to get by, and the subsistence policy turns into a criminal economy, where “tobacco is one of the main elements.”
Red, yellow, white, and blue packets: for every colour, a brand. The many cigarette dealers are not hiding. On the contrary, they preside over the entrances to railway and metro stations and beyond. Because “every public space becomes a hiding place for drug dealers.” Letterboxes, bins, public gardens, and even doorways.
Place de la Chapelle, not far from one of the landmarks of the Ville Lumière, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre is one of the key hotspots for the sale of smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes, which are hawked with cries of “cigarettes! Cigarettes!” Guézo also blames “the slow and gradual deterioration” on the French tobacco control policy. “The results of the initiatives undertaken are practically nil,” he laments. The decision to increase the price of cigarettes and even raise it beyond the mental threshold of 10 euros has not stopped consumption. Faced with the growth of drug dealing, Demain la Chapelle in 2019 managed to get attention and answers from politics, with legislation that for the first time introduced 135 euro fines for those who buy cigarettes on the street. “It has not served to discourage”neither demand nor supply.
The La Chapelle metro station. Outside the sale of illegal cigarettes prospers [photo: Chapelle Matthew Black/Wikimedia Commons]
The official figures, released by the State, indicate that 20 percent of the cigarettes smoked daily come from the parallel market, resulting in annual Treasury losses of 4 billion euros. A study by KPMG, an international consulting and auditing firm, estimates the damage resulting from lost tax revenues for the French State up to 9.5 billion euros due to the parallel market.
“These figures have the merit of existing and recognising the existence of a huge illicit market in France,” emphasises François Pierrard, director of the statistical observatory Hexagone. “We estimate that the actual number of buyers on the illicit market is around 30 percent of smokers, which translates into losses of six billion euros, or 60 percent of the annual budget for justice.”
What is certain is that the phenomenon is poorly addressed and poorly mapped. Figures are conflicting, but the fact remains that while France’s tobacco control choices deprive the Republic of a massive amount of resources, the smuggling and counterfeiting market thrives, to the detriment of public health, an unachieved stop smoking target, and social deterioration. “Too many taxes kill taxes,” Pierrard cuts short, blaming France for not changing its mentality. “In France, the tax culture is strong,” and this turns into a boomerang effect in the long run. “The higher the taxes are raised, the more smokers buy on the parallel market.”
By taxing so heavily, we have shifted purchasing behavior, pushing it onto the illegal market,” laments Philippe Alauze, president of the Confederation of Tobacconists of Paris–Île‑de‑France, adding that today “price policy no longer makes sense” as a deterrent to smoking. “France made a legal product into a product of prohibition,” which is already a paradox. Moreover, the policy conceived as dissuasive has produced the opposite effect, also putting pressure on tobacconists, the only authorised retailers. “In 20 years, 10,000 tobacconists have closed,” and the decline in cigarette sales due to price increases puts at risk the 22,800 tobacconists still in business.
“We must spread new nicotine-based products in the right way,” and without burning tobacco, emphasises the president of the tobacconists of Ile de France. “This can be a new world for us,” also considering that “there has been a reduction in the number of 18-21 year olds who smoke cigarettes because they have switched to vaping or puff, disposable electronic cigarettes.”
However, this “new world” seems to be receding in France, given the recent bans introduced by the Paris government, starting with the prohibition of puffs in February and, more recently, of nicotine sachets, which can no longer be consumed in France nor even possessed. In practice, starting in 2026, anyone found in possession of nicotine pouches, including American, European, or Scandinavian tourists from countries where the product is legal, may be treated as a criminal under the new French law if discovered by the Gendarmerie. Given what he calls an “own goal” on traditional tobacco products, Alauze argues that the new ones should be “better regulated and framed” from a legislative standpoint.
This is the approach in Sweden, which handles tobacco control in the opposite way to the French approach. On the one hand, there is the Scandinavian mentality, more open than others, which is not permissive and certainly not authoritarian. With tobacco, this vision translates into the belief that prohibitions and bans inevitably lead to illegal activities, of which one has no control. Better to regulate, then, and manage. An underlying consideration accompanies this approach: why intervene against the behaviour of the majority?
Sweden’s relationship with tobacco is lost in the folds of time. In the 16th century, the Swedes began mixing tobacco leaves with salt and water and placing them behind the upper lip; thus, snus was born, a product in vogue until World War II. Then, US soldiers began to spread cigarettes in Europe, which were soon relaunched by the film industry. Big Hollywood stars contributed to new fashions, expanding the global market for blondes. In 1963, the turning point: US President John Kennedy commissions a study to ascertain the incidence of smoking on lung cancer. It is the first time that tobacco has been linked to health. JFK’s death does not stop the study, and in 1964, the Terry Report (by Luther Terry, head of the US Public Health Corps) establishes that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer.
In the wake of this publication, Swedes chose, in the name of health, not to give up established habits and customs: they returned to consuming snus. The case is emblematic, and in the heated debate on new tobacco products decades in advance, Sweden becomes a model and a case study, as offering alternatives to traditional cigarettes in the Scandinavian country produced unprecedented results. National surveys show that by the end of 2024, only 4.6 percent of adults (aged 16–84) smoked daily. This makes Sweden the first country in the European Union to be smoke‑free under the criteria set by the World Health Organization, which defines a country as smoke‑free when fewer than 5 percent of adults light up a cigarette.
Nicotine pouches [photo: L.V. Olavi Rantala / Wikimedia Commons]
In Sweden, this was possible due to several factors. Firstly, the government’s decision to tax products differently according to harmfulness: the more harmful a product is to health, the more it is taxed. As a result, cigars and cigarettes are cheaper than alternative products such as snus, which does not involve the combustion of tobacco, the source of lung cancer risks.
The current government also adopted this approach during the debate in the EU Council on the reform of European regulations on the subject. Then the alternatives, as mentioned, which in Sweden means snus and now tobacco-free nicotine pouches, an innovation derived precisely from snus. The pouches, sold under the ZYN brand, have already been authorised in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency of the Department of Health and responsible for, among other things, tobacco control and supervision, has allowed the product to be sold on the US market. A decision that could now open up new scenarios for the European single market as well, not so much for the product itself as for the underlying principle: a product that does less harm should not be banned but properly taxed and regulated. As is done in Sweden.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
