Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France, has come out strongly against the introduction of standardized packs for cigarettes, according to a story in Connexion.
In November, the French parliament passed a law to introduce standardized packaging for cigarettes from May 2016.
Sarkozy was said to have told members of his party at a meeting on agriculture and rural France: “If we accept the neutral cigarette packet, in six months you will be offered a neutral bottle of wine, and this will be the end of our names; it will be the end of our land; it will be the end of our know-how”.
“Tomorrow, ‘fundamentalists’ will demand a neutral bottle for wines. Then neutral cheese.”
Sarkozy’s comments were described as “inappropriate, unacceptable and irresponsible” by the president of the French Office of Tobacco Control, Bertrand Dautzenberg, who said that the tobacco industry in France was virtually non-existent. “There are no cigarette areas in France,” he reportedly said. “The majority of French tobacco is made in Poland.”