Smoking in France: The downward trend has resumed, but social inequalities persist

It is an important public health marker, and it is flashing green: the prevalence of smoking has been established, in 2024, at 25% among 18-75 year-olds, compared to 32% in 2021, and that of daily smoking at 18%, compared to 25% three years earlier, according to the first results from the Public Health France (SPF) barometer, made public on Wednesday, October 15.

The results are still partial: the full data, including those on vaping—the presumed rise of which is being closely scrutinized—will be released in early December. But on the eve of the launch of the "No Tobacco Month" challenge led by the health authorities (the tenth edition of which begins on November 10), SPF wanted to communicate this positive trend.

"The number of daily smokers has decreased by 4 million in ten years, which clearly demonstrates that prevention actions and anti-smoking policies are working," Caroline Semaille, public health doctor and director general of the agency, told the press. Ten years marked by "several stages," said Viet Nguyen-Thanh, head of the addictions unit at SPF, alongside her: after a decrease of a scale described as "unprecedented" between 2016 and 2019, in the wake of the first national smoking reduction program, the years 2020-2021, corresponding to those of the Covid-19 crisis, saw the curve stabilize and even "rebound" in certain population categories. Since then, and the statistics released on Wednesday attest to this, the downward trend has resumed.

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