On Wednesday, June 20, 2012, the State Duma in the first reading adopted a new bill establishing a ban on advertising of beer and low-alcohol products on Russian Internet sites.
According to the requirements of the new bill, advertising of beer, as well as other low-alcohol products with an ethyl alcohol content of less than 5%, will be completely banned on Internet sites registered as mass media. Alcohol advertising will not disappear from other web resources. This measure is introduced in order to reduce the amount of alcohol consumption among young people, who are the most active Internet users.
According to Andrei Vorobyov, one of the chairmen of the United Russia Duma faction, Andrei Vorobyov, in recent years alone, the average level of people starting to drink in Russia has dropped from 14 to 11 years old, which means that we are no longer talking about teenagers, but about children. In his opinion, to solve this problem, Russia needs a large-scale "national plan to combat alcoholism" and its consistent and methodical implementation. Amendments to the law "On Advertising" are only one of the measures to protect the younger generation from the introduction to alcohol.
Earlier, a number of restrictions on advertising of alcoholic beverages in the media were already introduced into the law "On Advertising". For example, today the law prohibits the display of alcohol advertisements in daytime air on TV, images with alcoholic products cannot be placed on the covers of magazines, alcohol advertising is prohibited on the front and back pages of newspapers.
A new bill banning advertising of low-alcohol products and beer on Internet sites registered as mass media has been prepared by representatives of the United Russia faction. Many journalists immediately noted that the actress Maria Kozhevnikova, known to most Russians for her role in the youth TV series "Univer", took part in its development. Work on this bill was the first in her parliamentary career.
