End-game policy mooted

The Russian health ministry has unveiled plans to ban the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2015, according to a story by Will Worley for the independent.co.uk.

Such end-game policies have been discussed extensively elsewhere, recently in Tasmania, Australia; but so far no country has introduced regulations along these lines.

Although such cigarette purchase prohibitions are fair to existing smokers who are permitted to continue to buy them if they want to, and not unduly unfair on those who have not yet taken up smoking because they are underage, opponents point to the difficulties likely to be encountered in enforcing a prohibition on only a part a community.

Russia, which was for a long time was tolerant of smoking, has become less so in recent years.

Citing a report in The Times, Worley said that Nikolai Gerasimenko, a member of the Russian parliament’s health committee, had been quoted as saying that the “…goal is absolutely ideologically correct”.

But a Kremlin spokesman said such a ban would need serious consideration by and consultation between ministries.

Worley, citing the Tass news agency, reported that the number of smokers in Russia had dropped by 10 percent last year.

He said that the country’s smoking prevalence, at 31 percent, was the lowest it had been ‘in years’.