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ERZEUGT DURCH JUTOH - BITTE REGISTRIEREN SIE SICH, UM DIESE ZEILE ZU ENTFERNEN

Financial Times, Thursday, November 24, 1977

Smoking in the Soviet Union

A Burning Issue

Hypnosis is being used to combat the smoking habit in the Russian actors’ sanatorium at Sochi, the resort which is the centre of the Soviet antismoking campaign.

Instructions calculated to induce a trance and accompanied by organ music or the sound of birds chirping are transmitted to receivers in the pillows of those taking the cure upstairs. The instructions are followed by a carefully phrased antismoking message, the last sound the actor hears before falling asleep.

The method is only one of the sophisticated means being employed in Russia to get people to give up smoking. Although tobacco production is scheduled to rise 16 per cent in the 1976–80 five year plan, the countervailing efforts to discourage the habit are considerable, and growing.

Smoking is banned on all international Aeroflot flights of less than five hours, in dining cars, sports stadiums, swimming pools, ticket offices and—with difficulty—in many cafes. Moscow recently banned smoking at tables in the city’s 120 restaurants, allowing it only in restrooms and special foyers.

Russia is the world’s fourth largest tobacco grower, after the U.S., China and India, with total production in 1976 of 264,000 tonnes of raw tobacco, 218 bn. cigarettes and 1.57 bn. “Papirosi,” potent cigarettes which consist of a two-inch holder made of rolled paper and an inch of chewing quality tobacco. Demand for tobacco products is high and last year Russia supplemented domestic production by importing 74,000 tonnes of raw tobacco and about 53 bn. cigarettes, mostly from Bulgaria.

Sochi has undertaken a coordinated drive against the habit. City officials report a 25 per cent drop in cigarette sales and no decline in tourism. The Sochi anti-smoking effort is largely a characteristic of the “city of health” but it could presage wider efforts against smoking in the country as a whole.

Cautionary placards at the station and airport greet visitors to Sochi who are also met with anti-smoking propaganda in the sanatoria and rest homes where many spend their holidays. On arrival in the sanatoria, they’re asked whether they want to give up smoking. Those who try, inspired by the aura of good health and clean living, either do so unaided or with the help of medicines that help over withdrawal by imitating the effects of nicotine.

The treatment in the Sanatoria is largely psychological. Doctors discuss the harmful effects of smoking with those who want to stop the habit and there are discussion groups. Those who succeed are given a certificate congratulating them on their willpower and doctors at the sanatorium write to them to avoid a relapse.

In Sochi omnipresent posters proclaim that “work, rest and medical treatment are incompatible with smoking.” The campaign is supported by articles in the newspapers and programmes on radio and television. Smoking is banned in cinemas, hotels and public buildings, including the Sochi town hall. Kiosks that sell cigarettes also display antismoking literature.

This total approach to combatting smoking works well in a resort where the healthful atmosphere, nearby mineral springs, and the break in the work routine, encourage people to try to stop. An estimated 200,000 persons a year are now giving up smoking in Sochi, though only 10,000 succeed for good.

Other towns could follow the example. Exhortatory public propaganda is almost as common in Russia as advertising is in the West, so a national antismoking campaign would be both feasible and in character. The Soviet Health Ministry is concerned about the increase of smoking in the country, and particularly, the use of tobacco by schoolchildren. Literatarnaya Gazeta, the writers’ union weekly, has called for health warnings on cigarette packages, a ban on cigarette sales in grocery shops and from newsstands, and the elimination of inducements to smoke such as scenes of cinema stars smoking.

Oddly, the campaign has apparently met bureaucratic obstacles from ministries responsible for growing tobacco and making cigarettes. Per capita cigarette consumption by persons over 18 in 1974 was estimated to be only 60 per cent of that in the U.S., a tribute perhaps to Russia’s lack of cigarette advertisements, but consumption is rising and tobacco production is a 4 bn. rouble a year industry. According to Literaturnaya Gazeta, trade officials recently opposed the proposed inclusion of a health wanting in each cigarette packet and the Ministry of Light Industry, which oversees 54 tobacco factories, and the Ministry of Agriculture, which oversees 189,000 hectares of tobacco crops, are other potential sources of opposition to stringent anti-smoking measures.

More than 20 brands of cigarettes are on sale in Moscow and many more in the national republics. The most popular appear to be Yavaplain and Stolichnaya filter cigarettes at 30 Kopecks (about 33 pence) for 20. The Apollo-Soyuz brand, commemorating the joint U.S.–Soviet space flight, also appears popular, probably because of its American association and the American tobacco of which it is made, but is hard to get.

Cigarettes imported from the West are only sold to foreigners for hard currency.

The potent papirosi, production of which is to be cut one third by 1980, sell for 22 Kopeks for 250. There have been efforts to create tobacco substitutes but after unsuccessful attempts to make something smokable out of such substances as cellulose, sawdust, cabbage leaves, beetroot, dandelion leaves and pollen, the tobacco industry has given up. Scientists in Kiev, however, have designed a special cigarette holder which may go into wider use. It contains pills made of baked metal powder which act as a filter and are said to retain up to 75 per cent of the most harmful components of cigarette smoke drawn through the holder.