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If the Duma passes the bill, tobacco companies and smokers will have to get ready for unpleasant surprises. The former will have to pay higher taxes and face limits on their ads, while the latter will have to accept higher prices on cigarettes and a ban on smoking in public places. Of course, we won't have to face such horrors as a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars like in France, at least in the near future. But if Russia ratifies the WHO convention, in the next three years our tobacco companies will have to give up the use of such words as "light" or "mild" on cigarette packs because they can mislead smokers that they are harmless. They will also have to use at least a third of a pack to warn about the harmful effect of smoking or to place a gloomy picture of the cancerous lungs of a smoker or tobacco-stained yellow teeth. In five years Russia will have to reduce tobacco ads to the minimum, raise substantially prices on cigarettes with fiscal measures, ban or limit the sale of tobacco goods in duty-free shops and ban smoking in public places. The WHO adopted the anti-smoking convention at its 56th session in May 2003. It has been joined by 172 countries, including the European Union. But its provisions are carried out with different speed. Spain, the Netherlands, Norway and Italy have banned smoking in public places, while Australia, Brazil, Canada, Singapore and Thailand have so far limited themselves to putting horrible pictures about the damage of smoking on cigarette packs. Our officials are sure that the WHO convention is in Russia's best interests. The government has already instructed the Ministry of Economic Development to draft a bill that would tailor our national legislation to the WHO requirements. The chairman of the Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Yevgeny Fedorov, promised that officials would discuss and ratify the anti-smoking convention as soon as possible. Apparently, sad statistics have prompted policymakers to act. Rospotrebnadzor (Federal Service for Consumer Protection Rights and Welfare) reports that in the last 20 years the number of smokers in Russia has increased by 440,000. Some 65 percent of men and more than 30 percent of women smoke, as well as more than 3 million teenagers. Doctors say that a quarter of regular smokers are doomed to premature death. In 2006, 400,000 Russians died of smoking-related diseases. Today, smoking ads are banned on TV, radio, in the streets, transport and almost all public places. In general, tobacco companies are hoping that their losses in Russia will be much smaller than in other countries. Prices on cigarettes are still low: A pack in Russia costs 40 rubles on average (about $1.64 U.S.), which compares with three to 10 Euros in the EU. (The producers are paying no less than 2.84 rubles for every pack of filtered cigarettes, and by 2010 they will have to pay 4.2 rubles.) This is why the demand for cigarettes in Russia is much higher than in Europe. There is no risk that prices on tobacco products will skyrocket because in this case the Russian market will be flooded with cheap, smuggled cigarettes. Vlad Grinkevich is an economics commentator for the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti; Web site: http://en.rian.ru/. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti. © Copyright 2006 by CigarettesOn.Com |
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