YEREVAN, May 31. /ARKA/. Smoking in public places will be prohibited in Armenia, Levon Altunyan, healthcare minister, said Wednesday at an event dedicated to the International Day without Smoking.



«We have received an appropriate instruction from the country's leadership and are planning to submit the law to the parliament already in November 2017,» he said. «This will allow reducing the number of smokers in the country by 30 to 40 percent.»



In his words, the ministry has submitted a strategic program implying prohibition of smoking to the government.



The program contains four components – legislative, international, advertising and psychological and healthcare.



Altunyan said that many countries of Europe and the Eurasian Economic Union had already imposed such restrictions and that this measure might come across resistance.



«But we are ready for that,» he said.



The minister said he has given up smoking 15 years ago of his own free will.



Taxes for tobacco products, he said, may be raised to make cigarettes more expensive, and this can strike hard at smokers' pockets.



In his opinion, such a measure will force smokers to give up smoking and will fill family budgets with 250,000drams, on average, every year.



According to the World Health Organization, 7 million people die every year from smoking in the world, and other 600,000, including women and children who live with smokers, die from passive smoking. --0----









15:10 31.05.2017