Resisting Any Legislative Attempts to

¶ … resisting any legislative attempts to reduce smoking in Russia, government authorities have decided to follow the example set by many Western nations, including the United States in restricting smoking. The effort reflects the efforts and concerns of Vladimir Putin along with his First Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Shuvalov and Agriculture Minister, Nikolai Fyodorov, a former smoker. Presently, forty-four percent of the Russian population smokes, consuming nearly 400 billion cigarettes annually.

That rate of consumption is second in the world only to China and represents twice the rate of smoking in the U.S., where there are the same number of smokers in a population twice the size. The first nationwide anti-smoking laws were promoted by Putin in 2010 and they are intended to reduce smoking by as much as fifteen percent by 2015, the same year that excise taxes on cigarettes are scheduled to increase by one-hundred-thirty-five percent.

In principle, anti-smoking measures will include prohibitions against smoking in public places such as restaurants and hotels and on cigarette advertising, mandatory warnings on cigarette packs, and going even further than their counterparts in the U.S. By proposing to ban all cigarette advertising very much the same as the laws already in place in the U.S. And in other Western nations.

Those developments in Russia pose serious concerns for the entire international tobacco industry, such as for Japan Tobacco International because of the large market represented by the Russian population of smokers. Other international tobacco companies such as Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco have also counted heavily on the Russian Market ever since losing a large portion of customers in Western nations because of anti-smoking laws and public policies and greater health-issues awareness in the general public.

Thoughts The new attitude of the Russian government makes perfect sense because, according to the article, the annual national death toll attributable to smoking in Russia is approximately 400,000. Moreover, the morbidity associated with smoking is only a portion of the total societal cost of smoking because it is estimated that smoking also costs the already-cash-strapped nation the equivalent of almost $50 billion in annual healthcare costs and lost worker productivity from smoking-related illnesses.

Just as in the West before the historic disclosure of previously confidential industry information by a former insider that led to multiple class action settlements from litigation initiated by various state attorneys general in the 1990s, there is a tremendous tobacco industry political lobby in Russia fighting tooth-and-nail against the proposed legislation. Generally, they represent only the selfish interests of the tobacco companies and do not have any concern for the welfare of the members of Russian society. In my opinion, smoking will eventually be.