While in Russia 31% of the population smokes, The Russian Ministry of Health has decided to unveil its plans to drastically reduce smoking. The concept is simple, it aims to ban the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2015.
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This sweeping move would make Russia the first country to respond to smoking in this way. Russia has incomprehensibly tolerated smoking for a very long time, the first public restrictions were not introduced until 2013.
Moreover since this legislation was adopted it has considerably hardened the law. However, even the lawyers who worked on this proposal still have doubts about how to enforce this ban on selling to a whole generation of people. Another concern also arose, that of smuggling and the sale of tobacco on the black market.
But for Nikolai Gerasimenko, a member of the health committee of the Russian parliament: " This objective is good from an ideological point of view"
A Kremlin spokesman said such a ban would require serious consideration and consultations with other ministries. Such a move would likely cause an unprecedented surge among tobacco companies, but Russia has already made some significant progress against smoking. According to the Tass news agency, the number of smokers in Russia fell by 10% in 2016.
