Jail — for smoking

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 15

Jail — for smoking

PHILIP CROOKES

repoils on Russia's

“INo smoking” cities.

The Black Sea towns of Sochi and Ketnovich seem Ptetty typical Russian holiday resorts — until you take out a cigarette or light a pipe. Immediately, a perfect stranger will tap you politely on the shoulder and point to huge blue and red signs on nearly every wall which declare in unmistakable sign language: “No smoking”.

Sochi and Ketnovich are the world’s first no-smok-ing cities. Tobacco in any form is outlawed, and stiff fines are imposed on offenders, and persistent smokers are jailed. This, say Russian health authorities, is only a start. Large sections of Moscow and Leningrad are expected to ban smoking within the next year, and smoking in all buses and trains will be prohibited. The Mayor of Sochi, Mr Vyachaslev Voronokov says: “We want to make

smoking as rare in our city as walking down the main street wearing pyjamas. If you want to come to Sochi for sea and sun, you had better kick the smoking habit.” This, it seems, is only

the beginning. At least a dozen other European nations are contemplating similar moves. In West Germany, taxidrivers put up “Nichtraucher (No smoking)” signs in the window, and may refuse passengers who smoke. In Norway, it is against the law to smoke while driving. In Poland, smoking is forbidden in factories, offices, snack bars, and public places. In the U.S.S.R. the the authorities

have already banned smoking at all sports events, and forbidden the sale of the Communist world’s 300 brands of cigarettes at or. near the stadium. Whether all this has

anything to do with the problems experienced by the Communist Party leader (Mr Brezhnev) in kicking the smoking habit is not clear. At present, Mr Brezhnev is under doctor’s orders to cut down, and uses a cigarette case with a time lock, which opens once every two hours. The Russians are among the world’s heaviest smokers, but are coming under increasing pressure to mend their ways. Outside the Communist

world, the most determined of the antinicotine brigade are the Finns.

In Finland, it is now forbidden to advertise cigarettes, to smoke in premises which children under 16 might enter, or to sell smoking products to children. The penalty is jail.

In Bulgaria, smoking is forbidden in any office where there is even one non-smoking employee “unless he has given his consent in writing.” According to world listing compiled by ASH, the anti-smoking campaign, Britain comes a poor seventeenth in measures to help her people forsake their dependence on smoking, and is one of the few countries in the world that allows smoking in the cinema.

Perhaps the most intensive anti-smoking campaign so far is going on in Sweden, where the authorities are working on a long-term plan to produce a non-smoking generation. Every young Swede born after 1975 is being protected from the sight, taste, or smell of tobacco by a series of vigorously enforced anti-smoking laws.

Sweden is already low on the world table of cigarette consumption — the average Swede, according to the World Health Organisation, smokes 1620 cigarettes a year, while Americans smoke 3670, British more than 3000, French 1830, Germans 2500, and Norwegians 1760.

Mr Lars M. Randstroem, director of the Swedish National Smoking and Health Association says: “We want to develop a society that will be so unfavourable towards smoking, and have such an ability to resist trends of increasing consumption, that smoking cannot rise again as a major factor harmful to public health.”

In Australia, where the Government has to face a lobby of tobacco growers, the authorities insist that every time a cigarette brand is mentioned, the Government health warning must appear in letters at least as large.

This means that the busty young lady whose flamboyant figure extols the virtues of a popular brand of cigarettes on posters and TV will now have to add to the writing across her chest the advice, “This product is hazardous to your health