The Russian President has signed a new law banning the circulation and retail sale of tobacco products, which will come into force on March 1, 2025.
TASS reported on December 28 that Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law aimed at removing counterfeit tobacco products with unregistered labels from the market. This legal provision has been officially published.
The law aims to prevent the circulation of illicit tobacco. The bill authors note that all remaining product identification codes exceed the total annual sales in the market for cigarette products.
The new law prohibits the circulation and retail sale of tobacco products not labeled before June 30, 2020, and before December 1, 2020. In addition, the law proposes to prohibit the circulation and retail sale of the following products: products that are not labeled before June 30, 2021, but are labeled on July 1, 2021; Products that are not marked before March 1, 2022, and marked before October 1, 2023, and products that are not marked before December 15, 2022, and marked before December 1, 2023.
If violations of the laws of the Russian Federation are found in the monitoring (monitoring) activities, or if the monitoring (monitoring) activities cannot be carried out and the relevant report has been formed, a decision is taken to ban the circulation of tobacco products and products containing nicotine or raw materials for their production, the matter will be implemented by the Federal control and supervision body designated by the Russian Government.
Unless there is a provision specifying another effective date, the law will come into force on March 1, 2025.
