The first good idea to come out of Russia since....ever

[IceAgeComing]

I don't like this idea for lots of reasons - mostly because it'll create a black market for cigarettes and that's not a good thing for lots of reasons. 

Its not something that I'm a big fan of (I have asthma, so generally I try to avoid being around a significant amount of smokers at any one time simply because of that; although most of my friends back home smoke so that can be a challenge) but an outright prohibition is only likely to embolden dealers and similar people.  I think that the best policy is what we're doing back home: a mixture of a good education campaign, easily available services to help people stop smoking publicly funded (a cost-effective policy, the amount that you spend now is saved twenty years down the line) plus policies designed to limit the exposure of the stuff: things like banning any PoS adverts, mandating that shops cover the places that cigarettes or by plain packaging laws.  These are likely to be as effective as pure prohibition is while still allowing people to buy the stuff if they want.  Incidentally those are the terms that I'd legalise cannabis under unless there are studies around which show that there's a significant different in the health results after long term use; even then I think that the first two would be reasonable.