More than 101 thousand tons of tobacco

1991/05/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

This is what burns every year in France, specifically 101,756 tons of tobacco. Taking into account the resident population over 15 (smokers and non-smokers, both included), this means that each person smokes 6 cigars daily or 6.5 grams of tobacco. This consumption has remained the same in the last fourteen years.

What has changed has been the quality of tobacco. Now 60% of the cigarettes burned are blond and 12 years ago only 15%. The tar rate has also decreased: In 1960 it was 30.5 milligrams and is currently 17 milligrams.

The expense made for the burning of tobacco is also not negligible: About 800,000 million pesetas (42,500 million pounds), equivalent to expenditure on milk or vegetables or 1.2% of all expenses. These data are average, including non-smokers. Therefore, the data provided for the smoker are much higher.

In the classification carried out by WHO (World Health Organization), large tobacco consumers are those who burn more than 8 cigarettes a day on average (Greece, United States, Poland, Switzerland, Yugoslavia and Turkey, for example). France is a medium smoker and about 5 cigarettes a day Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, etc. They are.