Yannick Neuder, a member of parliament for the center-right Les Républicains party and former Minister of Public Health, proposes that companies pay a tax of 15 euros per 1,000 cigarettes sold.
“A cigarette butt is thrown out of a car window, and a forest goes up in smoke,” says Neuder, writes Tobacco Journal.
Neuder believes that tobacco companies should contribute in proportion to their revenues. The initiative follows a summer when more than 90,000 hectares reportedly burned across France.
Discarded cigarette butts are still a significant cause of accidental fires, and the French government is running information campaigns to raise awareness of their risks.
Yannick Neuder wants the money to go both to prevent fires and to pay for the fires that do occur.
