The plain packaging operation is under way

It is now official: Friday 20 May marks the arrival of plain packaging in French tobacconists. From that same Friday, manufacturers are no longer allowed to produce traditional cigarette packs for the French market.

Plain packaging, the flagship measure of the health bill

« Plain packaging is ugly, and that is the point », the health minister said on LCI.

While plain packaging is regarded as a victory in tobacco control, for the time being it will sit alongside traditional packs. These uniformly olive-green packs, with no visible brand logo and with health warnings covering two thirds of the packaging, will appear gradually.

The two will sit side by side until 1 January 2017

« There are no precise rules: plain cigarette packs will reach tobacconists depending on the volumes of current packs sold off, and therefore depending on the cigarette makers. We have no control over the deliveries planned for the coming days and weeks », says Pascal Montredon, president of the French tobacconists’ confederation. (Source Europe1)

So from Friday the tobacco industry will no longer produce packs bearing a logo for the French market, and the deadline for deliveries to tobacconists is set at 20 November. Current stocks must be sold off before the end of the year. Until 1 January 2017, the two kinds of cigarette pack may therefore coexist on tobacconists’ shelves while stocks are cleared. After 1 January, tobacconists still holding classic cigarette packs will no longer be allowed to sell them.

A measure that has gone down badly, but is spreading

The measure is therefore not entirely to the taste of cigarette manufacturers and tobacconists. The counter-offensive has been launched too: on Thursday 19 May the tobacconists’ confederation announced that it had lodged an appeal the previous day with the Conseil d’État, France’s highest administrative court, against the decree and the implementing order on plain packaging. The confederation is trying to buy time and is calling for the measure to be postponed « until all European countries have introduced it ». Japan Tobacco International and Seita, the French subsidiary of the British cigarette maker Imperial Tobacco, have taken the same line, both stating that they have lodged an appeal with the Conseil d’État aimed at slowing its entry into force.

This flagship measure of the health bill brought by minister Marisol Touraine, adopted on 26 January, has little in the way of precedent or hindsight. At present only Australia has introduced plain packaging, in 2012. England has also decided to apply it on Friday 20 May, as France is doing. Ireland and Hungary are expected to adopt it in the course of this year.

What about you? Are you ready for plain packaging?

For the record, the cigarette case is one of the accessories that has long existed alongside the pack.