Medvedev threatens smokers: these tobacco laws are “just the beginning”

Russia’s Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, has said that a proposed anti-tobacco law was “just the beginning” of a campaign to counter high mortality rates in the country, according to a story by Stepan Kravchenko and Henry Meyer for Bloomberg News.

The government is due to submit the bill to lawmakers by November 1, outlawing all cigarette advertising and sponsorship immediately and banning sales in smaller retail outlets and smoking in public places from January 1, 2015.

More significantly, the Health Ministry has proposed raising taxes to RUB4,000 per 1,000 cigarettes by the end of 2015 from RUB510 this year, according to a letter from Health Minister, Veronika Skvortsova, to the deputy prime minister, Olga Golodets.

Such a move would escalate Russia’s cigarette tax policy. Excise taxes were already scheduled to increase by about 40 per cent a year between now and the end of 2014 under current government policy.