By the end of the month, the government will examine the draft law on banning on smoking in public places from 2015, Dmitry Medvedev said. The epidemic of smoking has been gaining momentum in Russia in the past 20 years, and this has led to lung diseases, cancer, heart attacks and strokes and life expectancy reducing by an average of ten years. In short, every year (an equivalent of) a large city disappears, Medvedev emphasized. And contemporary children take cigarettes in their hands at the age of 11. Later, one third of teenagers regularly smoke cigarettes. This is the result of advertising light cigarettes. In all, 44 million Russians or one third of the country’s population are hooked on smoking. As a result, not only smokers but also passive smokers are suffering.

The Health Ministry submitted its anti-smoking bill to the Cabinet on the 31st of August. The document bans the sale of cigarettes in kiosks, and featuring tobacco products and smoking in new audio and video materials for children. The example of other countries shows that this strategy is effective.

The current anti-smoking initiative is not the first such move in Russia. In 2002, a law banning smoking in working places, in transport and healthcare and educational facilities came into force. Advertising cigarettes was restricted, while information on the harmfulness of smoking was printed on packets of cigarettes in big letters. However, this has failed to stop the epidemic. The reason here is not only the fact that tobacco lobby is very strong but also the habit of people. However, the ban on smoking should teach people to wage a healthy life-style, says psychologist Igor Kuzichev.

“The more the needs of people, the more the dependencies. To give up harmful habits one should know the principles of their formation. Secondly, people should acquire a good habit to replace the bad one,” Igor Kuzichev said.

Russia’s tobacco market is the second largest in the world after China. Four foreign markets have divided the market among themselves, Medvedev emphasized. It’s high time to ban tobacco advertising and raise taxes on cigarettes. This will increase the healthcare budget and will pave the way for spending more money on the anti-smoking programme. However, it will not be an easy task to counter the tobacco lobby because the media will lose revenues from stopping tobacco advertising, says economist Maksim Kozyrev.

“The tobacco business will fight back until it can. As a result we will achieve some sort of a compromise in the wording of the law. Final decision depends on the question of who will win and whose arguments are weighty,” Maksim Kozyrev said.

In fact, the tobacco lobby is not expressing its indignation. An increase in excise duty is fraught with the smuggling of cigarettes, says editor-in-chief of the Russian Tobacco information agency, Maksim Korolev.

However, experts believe that smuggling can be contained. Moreover, Russia has declared a war against counterfeit. The main thing is to do what has been done in other countries and outlive mass smoking.

Anyone who is interested can now legally possess up to 28 grams of marijuana, for smoking it at home. Growing and selling the drug remains illegal.

Washington’s measure follows years of controversy over recreational drug use. Backed by a host of celebrities including Sting, Carlos Santana and Arnold Schwarzenegger, former UN head Kofi Annan, who now heads the Global Commission on Drug Policy, continues to argue that the law of supply and demand makes the war on drugs unwinnable, and decriminalizing and properly controlling at least the less harmful aspects of drug production and use would constitute something of a solution to the drug problem. This view is shared by many in the medical profession. Five years ago, British physicians unveiled a league table of the most harmful drugs, in which heroin came first, cocaine, second, alcohol, fifth, tobacco, ninth, and marijuana, a rather innocent eleventh. So why not to legalize marijuana, as long as alcohol, a universally recognized social evil, is sold freely in most parts of the world?

Russia’s deputy counter-drug chief Nikolai Tsvetkov disagrees, describing the Washington vote as verging on insanity.

Drug industry expert Dr Igor Khokhlov, of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, warns that decriminalizing marijuana use may prove the thin end of an awesome wedge:

"The proponents of free marijuana or hashish use are mostly oldsters of the hippy generation. They are oblivious of the fact that the world has changed since the time of their antics at the 1969 Woodstock festival. The modern drug industry massively turns out cocaine and heroin, both a far cry from marijuana and hashish in terms of addictiveness and health risks. In the current circumstances, allowing marijuana use would open the gate of hell."

Indeed, everyone knows about the evils associated with banning drugs. Unfortunately, very few people realize that unfettering the drug industry would make matters much worse.