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This article examines the public revenues for France from tobacco sales to youths in 1997. The result is compared to the means of prevention the same year. Public revenues are estimated from: the number of adolescents divided into age groups (range: 12 to 19), the smoking rates by age group, the number of cigarettes smoked daily in each age group, the price of a cigarettes pack and the percentage of taxes. In 1997, almost 1.7 million youths were smokers and they smoked 240 million of cigarette boxes annually. This sale represented 4.7 billion of French Francs (FF) : 3.615 billion of taxes, 380 million for tobacconists’ and 762 million for the tobacco industry. The same year prevention represented less than FF 0.5 per year and inhabitant, one of the lowest ratios in developed countries.