Out of sight

Lawmakers want to make cigarettes less noticeable

State Duma deputies, concerned about the health of Russians, consider it necessary to remove cigarettes from smokers as much as possible. As Nikolai Gerasimenko, deputy chairman of the health protection committee, said the other day, speaking at the opening of the all-Russian forum “The Health of the Nation is the Basis of Russia’s Prosperity,” the committee already has a ready-made bill that would ban the sale of cigarettes near supermarket checkout counters (where they are always displayed in the most visible place) place) and at street kiosks. The goal of the initiative is to completely remove tobacco products from the sight of children and adolescents. According to legislators, beautiful packs displayed in a certain order are themselves promotion of smoking.

“Supermarkets should remove tobacco exhibitions, which you cannot pass by without looking,” Nikolai Gerasimenko, one of the authors of the new bill, explained the essence of his proposal to Vremya Novostei. -- If the new legislation is adopted, retail chains will have to provide separate rooms or sections for cigarettes in their stores, as was done some time ago with alcohol. It is advisable to allocate separate nooks and crannies for this unseemly product, deputies believe. And do not attract attention to them with any additional advertising. As for the usual tents with the inscription “Tobacco”, then, if you believe the legislators, their time has also passed. Nikolai Gerasimenko considers it necessary to “cover up” this type of retail trade in cigarettes completely. After all, monitoring compliance with trade rules (for example, the sale of cigarettes to minors) in tens of thousands of small outlets is much more difficult than in large stores. According to him, the main task of tobacco workers at the moment is to attract new smokers to consume cigarettes, since the number of old ones is becoming less and less every year due to natural population decline. “Their target is women, children, teenagers,” the deputy said. And this target group is more likely than anyone else to make rash acquisitions, succumbing to a momentary impulse.

According to the analytical company Busines Stat, which also monitors the cigarette market, the threat of a reduction in the number of consumers for tobacco companies in Russia really exists. According to their forecasts, cigarette sales will decrease from 336.3 billion units in 2008 to 331.7 billion units in 2009, as the Russian population will decrease by 400 thousand people, which will be aggravated by the departure of 500 thousand labor migrants.

The new draft law “On Restricting Tobacco Smoking” provides for not only a reduction in the places where cigarettes are sold, but also a complete restructuring of the remaining ones. Thus, Nikolai Gerasimenko said that dividing the halls of cafes and restaurants into “smoking” and “non-smoking” did not justify itself. “Air with smoke circulates freely between them, and waiters are forced to constantly enter the smoking room and be passive smokers,” says the deputy. Instead of smoking rooms, the new bill obliges all catering establishments where you can buy and smoke cigarettes to acquire isolated smoking rooms. Where smoke will not leak out thanks to tightly closing doors. Similar “smoking rooms” have existed in many Russian and Western airports for several years.

All measures listed under the bill should become the beginning of the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It will come into force at the beginning of this year.

Galina PAPERNAYA