Everything about the French tobacco plan 2023-2025

To fight tobacco trafficking, the French government has drawn up the 2023-2025 tobacco plan. What does it cover? How is it organised? Who does it concern? Here is the detail.

Helping customs cope with the rise in tobacco trafficking

Since 2020, French customs have recorded a rise in tobacco seizures. To counter illicit tobacco trafficking, Gabriel Attal unveiled the 2023-2025 tobacco plan on 5 December.

A range of measures is to be introduced in order to improve fraud detection and prevent clandestine factories from setting up on French soil. This calls for substantial investment, but the government expects the results to justify it.

Six levers against tobacco trafficking

Among the measures put forward by Gabriel Attal is the purchase of 22 additional scanners, positioned strategically on roads and at postal depots, for a total of 45 million euros. Training for tobacco detection dogs is also to be stepped up, increasing their number by 20 %. Chemical profiling of every large seizure will become automatic and will be handled by the customs laboratories. Tobacco precursors present in France will likewise be monitored, in order to check that any tobacco manufactured there complies with the rules.

Since the fight against tobacco trafficking is not confined to the ground, the authorities’ presence on social media will also be reinforced through web scraping and the creation of cyber investigation teams. Finally, working with ANSES, the French food, environmental and occupational health and safety agency, the state plans to improve knowledge of tobacco from parallel markets through toxicology studies.

Targeted raids and penalties

Anti-trafficking units will carry out targeted raids in shops as well as at street sale points. No fewer than 50 such operations are planned for 2023, a figure that will double by 2025.

Penalties are also on the cards, from bans on entering French territory to prison sentences and six-month administrative closures for late-night grocery shops selling tobacco illegally. In border areas, joint teams will work to intercept trafficking.