Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) (AFP) – Turkmenistan’s authorities have forced shops to stop selling cigarettes, traders in Ashgabat said Thursday, after its president urged citizens to kick the habit.
State anti-narcotics officials “came to our shop recently and forced us to remove cigarettes from the shelves, threatening us with huge fines,” said Bairam Saryev, the 34-year-old owner of a small store in the capital.
Saryev’s shop was one of those targeted in a wave of raids in the isolated Central Asian country after President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov slammed the country’s anti-smoking strategy at a televised government meeting on January 5.
Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist, threatened to dismiss the chief of the anti-narcotics agency — called the State Service for Security of Healthy Society — calling for “mass measures to eradicate smoking.”
Since then, owners of kiosks and shops have only sold cigarettes under the counter and “only to regular customers and friends,” said one Ashgabat kiosk trader called Vepa.
The ban on cigarette sales has not been officially announced or published by the government.
It’s that last line that caught my attention. There doesn’t seem to have been any law enacted. It’s all being done by presidential edict.
I guess it’s essentially no different anywhere else. Smoking bans are almost always top-down edicts rather than bottom-up reflections of public opinion.
Sierra Leone officials have confirmed a death from Ebola, hours after the World Health Organization declared the latest West Africa outbreak over.
Frank Davis 
OT: (but for how long?) Below Glantz officially supports the ban on smoking –and vaping– in public housing with more bullshit than you’d find on a hundred mile cattle run. It’s almost awe-inspiring, not only to see all this crap in one place, but to observe the sleight of hand with which he links unproven and manufactured “facts” to exactly specified numbers of deaths and quantities of dollars. The worst part being that he’ll get away with it
http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/hud-overstated-costs-and-vastly-understated-benefits-ending-smoking-some-public-housing
If you haven’t already, please post a comment on the government site. You might want to counter some of his absurdities. The deadline is next Tuesday.
HUD is going to put their foot in their mouth so deep that they will choke on it. I hope that they take Glantz and his cronies with them. That includes the President.
HUD is fucked and so is Obama even american democrats are voting GOP this year. The dems and the rinos have so screwed themselves its going to be a trump victory to no end. At least trump has fought against the Nazis for his own business.
Turkmenistan is a bit of an oddball place, if I recollect. Wasn’t it President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (I had to copy and paste that) who decreed that the days of the week (or was it the months? I can’t remember) should be re-named? After members of his family, or something?
Ah, no. I just googled it – it was his predecessor Niyazov who was the megalomaniac who renamed the days and months, erected statues of himself everywhere and did all sorts of other insane stuff. Although Berdymukhamedov seems a bit closer to sanity, he’s still not someone I’d like as president.
“Although Berdimuhamedow’s regime is much more open than Niyazov’s, it is still rigidly authoritarian.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurbanguly_Berdimuhamedow
Looks like smokers in Turkmenistan are in for a tough time. You may well see an increase in traffic from there, Frank.
Sounds like Sadam Hussein, Stalin, Lenin and the usual suspects.
Only 2 comments today? Did Rickie throw a wrench in the works?
Dickie Doubledunce is just a sad little man who likes to throw his weight around – I very much doubt if he has had any impact on the readers of this blog, except to perhaps elicit a sigh of weariness at yet another troll post from him. He was quiet for a while, but he has, it seems, decided to reprise his role as the incumbent twat.
I’ve noticed that weekends tend to be a lot slower, comments-wise, on all the blogs I read. I suppose most people are doing their weekend thing. I don’t do weekends, myself. They are just the same as other days, and I tend to work every day unless I have something else to do. I just take days out as and when I need or want to. But if you work a regular job, I guess the weekend becomes something special – a mini holiday, if you like. I can still sort of remember it, even though I haven’t been in that situation for forty years or so. I would imagine ‘reading blogs’ slides down the list of ‘things to do this weekend’!
I suspect people may be busy:
https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/proposed-us-nationwide-smoking-ban-in-public-housing/
Only 2 comments today? Did Rickie throw a wrench in the works?
I don’t think so. Perhaps Frank posted 2 things that could send tobacco control down the drain and trolls are employed to divert….
Did Rickie throw a wrench in the works?
He was over in the Arms boring the regulars with his TCI-shill rhetoric.
Banning the sales of cigarettes in Turkmenistan is so tobacco control lobby. They home in on a non-descript little country and “persuade” it’s government so that they can announce to the “big” governments” that “Others have done the ban on the sale of tobacco; it is a success”….
The ban on cigarette sales has not been officially announced or published by the government.
It is high time for transparency. EXACTLY HOW did the Turkmenistan government decide without CONSULTING it’s people?
WHY wasn’t this published months/years before this “law” came into force?
Sierra Leone officials have confirmed a death from Ebola, hours after the World Health Organization declared the latest West Africa outbreak over.
We haven’t been informed of this in the News, either…. Clearly the WHO is not doing the job we, the taxpayers, pay them for.
Transparency is a matter of urgency. Simply because we taxpayers everywhere also have to deal with ever mutating flu viruses. What does the WHO intend to do about this?
If anyone’s interested, I’m only an occasional blogger (not a large readership and easily missed), but I’ve done one re HUD and given someone the chance to invoke Godwin’s Law.
http://kin-free.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/war-against-weak-eugenics-evolution.html
Edicts top down, starting with the World Bank … Global Blackmailers.
Pierre Lemieux, World Bank.
https://www.google.ca/search?sclient=psy-ab&site=&source=hp&btnG=Search&q=Pierre+Lemieux+World+Bank
http://www.econlib.org/library/Features/feature5.html
Glantz’s run has gone on much longer than Joseph McCarthy’s HUAC caper. Who supports the nebulous network of S Glantz? RWJ Foundation? Who else? It would be interesting to find out just how many entities, governmental or otherwise, aid and abet this creepy man. Any ideas, Mr. McFadden? Harley?