Smoking kills 270,000 Russians every year, a senior expert of Russia's consumer protection watchdog body, Rospotrebnadzor, Gennady Ivanov, said Thursday at a conference devoted to the problems and prospects of Russia joining the Framework Convention of the Universal Healthcare Organization on Tobacco Control.

"Tobacco is to blame for 5 million deaths worldwide every year," Ivanov said. At present, 65 percent of men and 30 percent of women in Russia are smokers. Furthermore, the number of smoking women "is soaring", he said.

Officials of the Russian Preventive Medicine Center who participated in the conference, said 30 million men and 14 million women aged over twenty smoke. The average life expectancy in Russia is 10-15 years shorter, as compared to that in advanced countries.

"But for smoking-related diseases, Russia's men would live up to 63 years on the average, in contrast to the current 59.4 years," the Center's officials said.

A recent survey, conducted in twenty cities across Russia found that "over 50 percent of male and 40 percent of female Russian high school seniors smoke," the head of National Center for Coordination of Antismoking Activities, Galina Tkachenko, said.

According to the gathered statistics, every non-smoker, or so-called passive smoker, inhales one cigarette's worth of tobacco smoke every day - at bus stops and other public places, Tkachenko said.

Source: Itar-Tass