Business Community Criticizes Smoking Bill

Business Community Criticizes Smoking Bill

According to various estimates, between 300,000 and 400,000 Russians die from smoking-related diseases every year.

Published: November 30, 2011 (Issue # 1685)

A new smoking law threatens to severely damage small businesses throughout Russia, campaigners say.

The draft law aims to reduce tobacco use and improve the health of the nation, yet could prove to be harmful in other ways, according to its opponents. However inconvenient these new conditions might seem to smokers, they are not the only ones affected by the new ordinance — the effects are much more global. Experts believe that the adoption of the law will first of all affect small restaurant and retail businesses.

The project includes a number of radical measures including a 50-percent increase in proportional excise tax on tobacco products, resulting in an increase in the cost to the buyer, a ban on smoking in many public places such as hotels, cafes, nightclubs and on long-distance trains and a ban on selling cigarettes in retail premises smaller than 50 square meters.

Some experts believe the bill doesn’t meet its stated aims and could moreover cause substantial damage in social and economic spheres. These opinions were expressed on Nov. 24 at a roundtable discussion in St. Petersburg devoted to the effects of the new law on small businesses and society.

The U.K. is proof of this hypothesis, participants argued. Before a similar smoking law was put into effect, between 70 and 80 pubs went bankrupt every year in the U.K. After the introduction of a ban on smoking in public places, the number skyrocketed to between 1,500 and 1,600 per year. According to Maxim Makshanov, general manager of the Coffeeshop Company chain, the law itself has not been well thought through.

Participants of the roundtable insisted that smaller trade businesses are threatened by this draft law, and that it could result in the development of a monopoly.

“The law violates the fundamental rights of the constitution and pursues not the public good, but individual interests,” said Alexander Tretyakov of the St. Petersburg Association of Small Consumer-Based Businesses.

Others went as far as to question whether or not it is right to protect the rights of non-smokers at the expense of smokers. Vasily Govorov, a representative of the St. Petersburg cigar club, said that a good compromise for the situation would be to create designated areas where smokers can smoke and implement additional taxes on establishments that allow smoking.

Konstantin Bely, general manager of the Association of Food Establishments, posed another question: How can people be made to follow the law? “Most people who go to bars are smokers. What should be done if one of them begins to smoke? Call the police? By the time they get there, the person will have already finished their cigarette.”

Other opponents of the proposed law said that a law aimed at improving citizens’ health shouldn’t require people to smoke outdoors, exposed to the elements of the Russian winter. They also argued that because smoking will be forbidden in other places, parents will be forced to smoke at home, setting a bad example for their children.

This summer, the Ministry of Health and Social Development prepared a federal draft law on the protection of public health from the effects of tobacco use.

According to various estimates, between 300,000 and 400,000 Russian citizens die from smoking-related diseases each year. In addition to this, smoking is considered to be one of the reasons for the demographic crisis in Russia. The bill’s supporters, therefore, argue that passing this law is a logical and necessary step.

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