Tobacco shops close to protest higher cigarette taxes

PARIS - France's war on smoking faced its first major battle Monday as the government raised cigarette taxes and tobacco vendors nationwide hit back by closing shops and refusing to sell the higher-priced smokes.

Black flags hung from shuttered tobacco shops across France, with 90 percent of the country's 34,000 vendors joining the unprecedented "day of mourning" for what they declared a dying trade.

"Your tobacco vendor is fighting for survival," read a notice taped outside several Paris smoke shops.

It made for a tough day in a nation of 20-million smokers.

"Just great!" moaned Hakim Hachouche, a dancer frantically searching for an open tobacco shop on his way to morning rehearsal. "I can't have a cigarette even if I want to pay more for it."

The average price for a pack jumped from $4.60 to $5.40. The increase, the second since January, comes as the government pursues the most aggressive antismoking campaign in French history.

A third increase planned for early 2004 will push the price of a pack to about $6.30, roughly 50 percent more than a year earlier.

This summer the country made it illegal for people under 16 to buy tobacco products, France's first such age limit.

Authorities also are finally cracking down on people - and there are plenty of them - who violate the ban on smoking in hospitals, airports and other public places.

And the government is pressuring the movie industry to stop glorifying smokers.

Political will has been backed by cash: the 2003 budget devoted $8-million to antitobacco causes, up from $466,000 last year.

France has long been a smoker's paradise, where lighting up is considered sophisticated and chic.

Some 20-million French smoke - over a third of the population - as do 50 percent of youths aged 15-24, the highest rate in the European Union.

The country, however, is slowly waking up to tobacco's ugly side.

Lung cancer was the leading cause of death for people under 65 last year, and smoking-related illnesses killed 66,000.

The three tax increases in 12 months will make France one of the most expensive places on the continent to smoke. Britain has the priciest cigarettes in the EU, with an average pack costing $7.80.

Rising prices have spawned a black market and driven smokers to buy cheaper cigarettes in neighboring Spain, Italy, Germany or Belgium.

Nationwide, cigarette sales fell an unprecedented 8.2 percent in the first eight months of the year.

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