Smoke shops strike

last updated 8 January 2015

Paris

Tobacco vendors across France shut down for a day to protest this week’s rise in taxes on cigarettes. The price of a pack of cigarettes went from $4.60 to $5.40, as part of the government’s unprecedented anti-smoking campaign. Cigarette-shop owners declared a “day of mourning” for what they said would be the death of their business. More than 90 percent of them closed their stores and draped them in black crepe. But the government was unmoved, saying it would raise taxes again next year. More than half of French adults smoke, and lung cancer is the country’s leading cause of death for people under 65.