French Law Limiting The Transport of Tobacco
A recent French law has effectively outlawed tobacco tourism which uses France either as a destination or as a route. Under pressure from the tobacco sellers interest group, les bureaux de tabac, and despite the resistance of the French Government, the French Parliament has enacted a law that makes it illegal to transport more than 200 cigarettes whilst in French territory: fines and confiscation are sanctions if a person is found to be in possession of more than 200 cigarettes whilst traveling through/in France. The law is designed to prevent French citizens buying tobacco in Belgium and Luxembourg. Following recent tax increases in France it has become more attractive for French citizens to buy tobacco in Belgium and Luxembourg. The law also applies to citizens of other European countries traveling through France with more than 200 cigarettes in their possession. There is a suggestion that the law is incompatible with European Commission directives which demand freedom of movement and goods, for personal use, across the borders of European Union countries excluding specifically named "new member states".
Read more about this topic: Booze Cruise
Famous quotes containing the words french, limiting, transport and/or tobacco:
“Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country—it had all been done in our name.... The French city ... had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.”
—James Fenton (b. 1949)
“I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and ... powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“There is held to be no surer test of civilisation than the increase per head of the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Yet alcohol and tobacco are recognisable poisons, so that their consumption has only to be carried far enough to destroy civilisation altogether.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)