Smoking is a bad, pernicious habit that many Russian citizens are exposed to. Along with smokers, deliberately destroying their health, innocent people who are nearby and forced to inhale the products of tobacco combustion involuntarily suffer. But it has long been proven that even secondhand smoke is extremely harmful.
Premature mortality from a number of diseases caused by active and passive smoking, decline in health and efficiency of the population - all this causes enormous material and moral damage to the state and society. Albeit with a noticeable delay, the authorities nevertheless began to take measures to restrict smoking. And now they can reach a qualitatively new level.
The Ministry of Health and Social Development has developed and submitted to the State Duma a bill banning smoking in public places. According to him, smoking will be completely banned in the vast majority of public places, including restaurants, cafes, bars, as well as common areas of residential buildings (in entrances, on staircases), at transport facilities, including long-distance trains. The price of tobacco products will rise significantly, and it will be prohibited to sell them in kiosks and stalls. It will be possible to buy such products only in a store with a retail area of at least 50 square meters (in the countryside, at least 25 square meters). Tobacco products will not be able to be displayed openly, the buyer will have to ask the seller if they are available and at what price.
Advertising of tobacco products, including indirect advertising through works of art, will also be sharply limited. A separate clause of the bill stipulates that the inclusion, for example, of a smoking scene in the script of a feature film may be permissible only if it is an integral part of the artistic concept and general setting that the script describes. Agree that in a film about the war, one simply cannot do without such scenes: all soldiers cannot be completely non-smokers.
It is very likely that this bill will be passed, too much harm from smoking. But as one well-known historical character once said: "In Russia, the severity of laws is compensated by the non-obligation of their execution." Reasonable questions arise: Will there be strong opposition from the wealthy and influential tobacco lobby? Who and how fundamentally will monitor the observance of this law? Will it not turn into another source of feeding trough for our already highly corrupt law enforcement agencies? There are no answers yet. It is clear that the struggle of non-smoking citizens for the right to breathe clean, non-poisonous air will not be easy. But it is also clear that it cannot continue this way: smoking must be fought.
