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Cheap cigarettes: a bane of Russia

— PHOTO: AP

Pay attention: Schoolgirls display the “No Smoking” sign to mark No Tobacco Day in Manila on Friday.

MOSCOW: Russian smokers appear to have generally ignored the World No-Tobacco Day on May 31 even as the government moved in to crack down on smoking.

A poll conducted in Moscow showed that smokers had no plans to kick the habit even for a single day, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. It obviously would take much more than arranging anti-smoking conferences and concerts across the country to mark the No-Tobacco Day.

Smoking has grown to catastrophic proportions in Russia. Today, Russians puff through twice as many cigarettes as they did 10 years, putting Russia among the world’s heaviest smokers, far ahead of India. Per capita tobacco consumption in this country is close to 2,800 cigarettes. Regular smokers account for 63 per cent of men and 27 per cent of women. Every year 3,00,000 people die in Russia of smoking-related causes.

After long years of inaction the government has finally braced itself to fight the tobacco epidemic. Last month, Russia joined the 2003 World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The Parliament now plans to ban cigarette advertising, smoking in public places and restrict sale of cigarettes.

Meteoric increase in smoking in Russia began after the break-up of the Soviet Union, when the former President, Boris Yeltsin, privatised the tobacco industry and threw the doors open for transnational tobacco giants such as Philip Morris, British-American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco. Within a few years, they took over the Russian market, installed new high-productivity equipment and launched an extremely aggressive advertising campaign targeting primarily the young and women.

According to statistics, children today try smoking at the age of 10 and by the time they reach 17 two-thirds become hard smokers. The number of women smokers has grown more than five-fold since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Intriguingly, the share of men smokers in the 40 to 60 age group has recently declined, not because they smoke less, but because they die early.

Cigarettes in Russia are about the cheapest in the world because of low excise taxes, according to deputy head of the Russian Parliament’s Health Committee Nikolai Gerasimenko. Average cigarette prices do not exceed $1 for a 20-piece pack, while over 40 per cent of the market belongs to lower grade tobacco selling for less than 50 cents a pack. Russia is the only country in the world to have fixed the upper price ceiling for cigarettes, said Mr. Gerasimenko.

In his confirmation speech in Parliament last month, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set the task of raising the average life expectancy in Russia from 65.5 years to 75 years over the next 10 years, and specifically called for combating smoking. But tobacco transnationals would not give in without a fight. They have already invested about $2 billion in Russia and are further expanding production to catch up with the booming Russian market.

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