Tag: Russia

  • Russia Adopts Bill to Restrict Vapor Products

    Russia Adopts Bill to Restrict Vapor Products

    The State Duma MPs in Russia have adopted a bill restricting the use of electronic cigarettes and hookahs.

    According to a statement from the lawmaking authority, the measure sets restrictions on the use of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and hookahs inside certain territories, premises and objects; issues requirements for demonstration of electronic smoking articles in audiovisual works for minors and adults.

    Moreover, the document restricts the sale of vapor products and bans their sale to minors and involvement of children in the use of them, according to a Russian state information agency.

    There is also a proposal to introduce administrative fines for violations of the imposed restrictions.

  • Curbing Vapor and Hookah

    Curbing Vapor and Hookah

    Photo: Demerzel21 | Dreamstime.com

    Russian lawmakers have adopted a bill restricting the use of electronic cigarettes and hookahs.

    According to a statement of the lawmaking authority, the document sets restrictions on the use of electronic nicotine delivery systems and hookahs inside certain territories, premises and objects; issues requirements for demonstration of electronic smoking articles in audiovisual works for minors and adults.

    Moreover, the document restricts the sale of vapor products and bans their sale to minors and involvement of children in the use of them, according to a Russian state information agency.

    There is also a proposal to introduce administrative fines for violations of the imposed restrictions.

  • KT&G Donates Diagnostics Kits to Russia and Turkey

    KT&G Donates Diagnostics Kits to Russia and Turkey

    Photo: KT&G

    KT&G has provided diagnostic kits worth KRW100 million ($84,136) to Russia and Turkey, where the new coronavirus infection has been spreading rapidly. In early May, the government provided 6,300 diagnostic kits to the Indonesian government.

    “We decided to further support Russia and Turkey in order to help overcome the global disaster,” said Kyung-Dong Kim, KT&G’s head of social contribution. “We will fulfill our social responsibilities as a company.”

    Headquartered in South Korea, KT&G has substantial operations in both countries.

    KT&G has also supported coronavirus relief efforts in its home market. Among other initiatives, the company donated KRW500 million in emergency aid to the National Association for Disaster Relief and delivered KRW1,600 million worth of medical items.

  • Lawmakers Push for ‘Nicotine Pack’ Tax

    Lawmakers Push for ‘Nicotine Pack’ Tax

    Russian lawmakers want to start taxing orally consumed nontobacco nicotine products (“nicotine packs”).

    A bill that aims to impose an excise duty on such products has been submitted to Russia’s government for review.

    Because nicotine packs are a viable alternative to smoking, they should be subjected to state control, argues the bill’s author, Sergey Katasonov, who also serves as first deputy chair of the State Duma committee on budget and taxes.

    Katasonov noted that authorities across the Eurasian Economic Union, of which Russia is a prominent member, have already started asserting control over new nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn (HNB) products.

    At present, the State Duma public health committee is studying a bill envisaging massive changes to Russia’s tobacco legislation. Among other amendments, the bill seeks to treat e-cigarettes and HNB devices like traditional tobacco products.

  • Illegal trade up sharply

    Illegal trade up sharply

    The illegal trade in tobacco products in Russia captured nine percent of the market this year, according to a TASS report quoting the vice president of Japan Tobacco International, Brendan LeMoult.
    “Illicit tobacco market in Russia has grown up from 1-2 percent to nine percent in 2018,” LeMoult told the Global Illicit Trade Summit 2018 in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.
    Meanwhile, JTI’s vice president of corporate relations and communications in Russia, Sergei Golovko, said that Russia’s cigarette market had stood at 275 billion cigarettes in 2017, down three percent from that of 2016. However, the value of cigarette sales in the country had grown during the same period by 10 percent to 1.2 trillion rubles.
    Golovko said that the TNS Kantar research agency had found that the illegal tobacco market in Russia had increased seven-fold between 2016 and the first quarter of 2018. The bulk of the illicit products, it added, had come from states that were members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), notably Kazakhstan and Belarus, which had accounted for 38 percent.
    At the same time, 31 percent of illicit cigarettes were manufactured by domestic producers, while 25 percent had been supplied from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Tajikistan.
    Golovko said that ‘free economic zones’ in the UAE had become the fastest-growing channel for illicit cigarettes entering Russia. This year, illegal cigarette shipments from this country had increased seven-fold and had taken 5.7 percent of the overall illicit market. In the past year, nearly 200 million cigarettes from the UAE had been seized, up 150 percent on those seized in the previous year.

  • Drinking problem

    Drinking problem

    Age-adjusted rates of premature death from smoking in Russia dropped by nearly 34 percent between 1994 and 2016, according to a story in Science Magazine citing ‘the most extensive health study on the nation ever conducted’.
    More generally, life expectancy in Russia during the same period increased by more than seven years, while rates of death among children under the age of five decreased by nearly 60 percent.
    Russia saw progress also in reducing premature death (as measured in years of life lost – YLLs) from stomach cancer, drowning, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
    “These are significant accomplishments,” Dr. Mohsen Naghavi, a professor of health metrics sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, was quoted as saying. “Russia’s public health officials deserve recognition for their efforts lowering the country’s burden of disease.”
    However, the study concludes that the nation continues to face considerable health challenges.
    Russia exceeds all other countries for age-adjusted premature death rates attributed to alcohol use disorders and has the second-highest premature death rate from drug use globally.
    “Like many other nations, more than half of all deaths in Russia can be attributed to behavioral risk factors, most prominently alcohol and substance abuse,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, an author on the study and director at IHME.
    The study, Burden of disease in Russia, 1980-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016, was published on Friday in the international medical journal The Lancet. It is part of the Global Burden of Disease study, a comprehensive effort to quantify health internationally, covering 333 diseases and injuries and 84 risk factors.
    Researchers found more than half of all deaths in Russia are attributable to behavioral risk factors, such as smoking, alcohol use, dietary risks, low physical activity, drug use, and unsafe sex. However, high blood pressure, a metabolic risk factor, was the leading risk for death in Russia, accounting for nearly one in three deaths in 2016.
    The ‘top 10’ causes of premature mortality in 2016 were given as:

    1. Ischemic heart disease
    2. Stroke
    3. Suicide
    4. Cardiomyopathy
    5. Road injuries
    6. Lower respiratory infections
    7. Lung cancer
    8. Alcohol use disorders
    9. Interpersonal violence
    10. HIV/AIDS

    And the ‘top 10’ risk factors contributing to premature mortality in 2016 (ranking based on all ages rates of YLLs per 100,000 people):

    1. High systolic blood pressure
    2. Alcohol use
    3. Smoking
    4. High total cholesterol
    5. High body-mass index
    6. Diet low in whole grains
    7. High fasting plasma glucose
    8. Diet low in fruits
    9. Diet low in nuts and seeds
    10. Ambient particulate matter pollution.
  • Donskoy part of JT Group

    Donskoy part of JT Group

    Photo: JTI

    The JT Group has completed the acquisition of the Donskoy Tabak (DT) companies.
    The agreement to acquire the companies was made public in a press release on March 16.

    “The acquisition of DT enables the JT Group to complement its existing product portfolio with DT’s value brands, and expand its distribution network through DT’s strong salesforce,” JT said in a statement.

    “This acquisition will reinforce the group’s No.1 position in Russia, a country which has been a key market in earnings growth for many years.”

    JT said the transaction would not have any material impact on the JT Group’s consolidated performance for the fiscal year 2018.

  • Vive la différence

    Vive la différence

    Russia’s Minister of Industry and Trade, Denis Manturov, has said that Russia is preparing to categorize vaping products and tobacco products differently, and therefore to regulate them separately, according to a story by Diane Caruana for vapingpost.com
    Manturov said the Russian government had taken the initiative to place vaping devices into a separate category because they were radically different from traditional cigarettes and tobacco.
    This motion will be commended by many public health experts, who have been pointing out that any product regulations should be related to the risk of the product.
    “Electronic devices are safer,” said Manturov. “Many experts, including Western experts, even articulate a figure: electronic means of nicotine delivery are 95 percent less harmful than conventional cigarettes.”
    The minister said also that Russia’s Ministry of Health was onboard with the proposal to categorize the two products separately, and was urging smokers to switch to the safer alternatives.

  • Pilot tracking system

    Pilot tracking system

    The illegal trade in tobacco products is expected to become riskier with the advent of digital codes on licit products, according to a Russian News Agency (TASS) story.
    The story said that a pilot project had started in January, and that as part of that pilot the first marked packs of cigarettes were expected to roll off the production line ‘in the near future’.
    According to the plans, by 2019 all tobacco products will bear a digital code that carries data about the manufacturer and about the entire logistics chain from the assembly line to points of sale.
    Unnamed experts interviewed by TASS said they believed the retail prices of cigarettes would not rise to pay for the tracking system.
    They said too that the first indication of the success or otherwise of the system would become known in June, after the first phase of the pilot project.
    Meanwhile, the vice president of corporate affairs at Philip Morris International, Russia, Sergey Slipchenko, was quoted as saying that, taking into account the expected significant decline in the turnover of illicit products when marking was implemented, the costs of the system would be fully justified.
    And according to the senior manager of Japan Tobacco International, Russia, Sergey Golovko, digital marking could become an important tool in the fight against illicit tobacco products. “Along with the stabilization of excise rates within the Eurasian Economic Union, the introduction of mandatory digital marking will help create conditions under which manufacturing and selling illegal products will become a lot riskier,” he said.

  • Russians hit by health bug

    Russians hit by health bug

    The incidence of tobacco smoking has dropped significantly in Russia during the past five years, according to a story in The Moscow Times citing a report in the Kommersant business daily.
    The number of adult smokers is said to have fallen 22 percent over five years, while there has been a ‘threefold decrease in smoking among minors’.
    “Looking back at the past 5-7 years, we managed to partially overcome bad habits like smoking thanks to a progressive law against tobacco smoking,” Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova was quoted as saying.
    At the same time, Skvortsova was able to report that Russia’s alcohol consumption had dropped by 80 percent during the past five years.
    The Times story said that the latest World Health Organization figures put Russia’s alcohol consumption below that of France and Germany, though it wasn’t clear whether the figures compared total consumptions or per capita consumptions.
    The consumer-rights watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, was said to have credited new minimum price laws, advertising bans and sales restrictions for the drop in alcohol consumption.
    And while drinking and smoking are going down, exercising is going up. About 40 percent more Russians are said to have become involved in sports during the past five years.