MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) — Russia’s parliament, the Duma, is set to consider revising the country’s anti-smoking laws, which would reintroduce smoking rooms and special outdoor smoking areas in the country’s airports and train stations, Rossiyskaya Gazeta has reported.
The proposals for alterations to the country’s new anti-smoking laws, which have come into effect over the past two years, are not only aimed at their liberalization. Further restrictions are also proposed which would make it illegal to smoke around bus stops, in pedestrian overpasses and underpasses, and in the corridors and kitchens of communal apartments, still inhabited by about 7 to 10 percent of the Russian population.
The country’s anti-tobacco laws, which first came into force in June 2013 have made it illegal to smoke in and around train stations, airports, ports, and metro stations. In June 2014 further restrictions were introduced which made it illegal to smoke in restaurants and cafes, on railway platforms, aboard ships on long distance trips, and in other public places such as hotels, shops, stores and markets.
The progressive tightening of Russia’s tobacco laws took place after Russia’s signing of the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative in 2008. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the country’s health authorities fought a losing battle against an explosion of tobacco-related problems caused by a loosening of anti-tobacco legislation and regulation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. If in the mid-1980s about 47 percent of men and less than 5 percent of women smoked, by the early 2000s figures had risen to 60-65 percent of men and over 20 percent of women. Since then, the number of smokers has declined, although the number of smokers in Russia as a percentage of the population is still among the highest in the world; according to a 2009 World Lung Foundation report, Russians light up an average of 2,786 times every year. Officials and experts note that the recent laws have contributed to over a million people deciding to quit.
