The Ministry of Internal Affairs will conduct an inspection on the facts of the sale of illegal tobacco in 17 regions of Russia, where 16.5 thousand entrepreneurs sell such products. This was reported to Izvestia by the press service of the Ministry on September 26.
"The relevant department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs received an appeal from the chairman of the ROOP "Public Consumer Initiative" about possible violations of legislation in the sphere of turnover and nicotine-containing products. Verification of the stated facts is entrusted to the territorial bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia at the regional level," the Ministry explained.
Earlier, on September 18, Izvestia reported on the appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the head of the Public Consumer Initiative (OPI) Oleg Pavlov, under whose leadership a study of the tobacco market was conducted.
The letter noted that the government decree of February 28, 2019 introduced mandatory labeling by means of identification of tobacco, nicotine-containing products, nicotine-free liquids and electronic nicotine delivery systems in Russia. However, as the study showed, not all retail market participants fulfill these requirements.
As the OPI told Izvestia, the Moscow Region was in the first place among the violators, where 2,625 points with illegal sales were identified. We are talking about small retail. Also in the top three were Moscow (1968) and the Krasnoyarsk Territory (1922). In addition, massive violations were detected in the Altai Territory, Khakassia, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Kemerovo, Omsk, Tyumen, Amur, Smolensk, Samara, Novosibirsk, Ivanovo, Pskov and Oryol regions.
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