The fight for a healthy image

Deputies defeated smoking in a separate part of the country

The concern of the people's representatives for the health and well-being of their people is truly immeasurable. Parliamentarians, in a noble impulse, strive to forcibly make a strongly resisting nation happy, improve its health and wean it from bad habits. Since the bill on the widespread restriction of tobacco smoking was lost in the Okhotsk Ryad offices (more than a year has passed since the deputies of the second convocation managed to pass it in the first reading), parliamentarians began to partially create favorable and healthy conditions. Last Friday, the implementation of the decision recently adopted by deputies to ban smoking in the State Duma building began.

Preparations began the day before. The cleaners informed everyone they met that all trash bins would be removed starting the next day. And some girl in a T-shirt with the SPS logo and a blue jacket ran up to a group of smokers and began shaking papers in front of them, shouting that smoking was not allowed in the Duma. The girl, or, as one of the eyewitnesses noted, a young-looking old woman, did not find proper understanding.

The SPS logo is not accidental. The resolution was adopted a couple of months ago precisely on the initiative of the main fighters for the improvement of the nation - deputies from the Union of Right Forces. Here they are, our heroes - Alexander Fomin, Lyubov Glebova, Vadim Bondar. Their generosity shocked everyone even more when it turned out that two of them were heavy smokers. On the sidelines, it was suggested that right-wing deputies called for an end to smoking because of an insatiable desire to “quit” the bad habit themselves. And it’s somehow sad to leave alone. So they decided to introduce all the inhabitants of the Duma to a healthy lifestyle.

However, this version has its own inconsistencies. No one can forbid an inviolable people's representative from smoking, especially if he does it in his office. Fortunately, deputies have separate offices, some even have two. Therefore, the main victims are staff members, journalists, and numerous visitors, many of whom have nowhere to hide. And also the cleaners, who, on the eve of bringing the Duma premises into compliance with the resolution, were sadly wondering where they should now put the huge number of trash cans.

However, the next day, in spite of everything, from all the stairs, halls and other places where not only ordinary Duma visitors, staff members, journalists, but also the deputies themselves had previously not hesitated to poison the blissful atmosphere of parliament, all the ballot boxes disappeared. And in their place there are now advertisements announcing that “The State Duma is a tobacco smoking-free zone,” and therefore citizens should “refrain” from this bad habit. One of the visitors, apparently imbued with the mood prevailing in the Duma, on the same day continued in clumsy handwriting a list of things to abstain from: “as well as corruption and theft.”

Daria KORSUNSKAYA