MOSCOW – Soon Russians will be able to light up in fewer places as the country moves to ban smoking in public places within five years, Bloomberg reports. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said that smoking is a national health “calamity.”

Government plans to curtail smoking will include a prohibition against advertising tobacco products by 2012 and a smoking ban for public localities and cultural, medical and sports facilities by 2015, a government report indicated.

As high as 80 percent of Russian men and nearly half of Russian women smoke in some regions. Smoking rates for youth and women rose three-fold during the past five years. The report also pointed to tobacco as being the cause of as many as a half million deaths annually.

Russian is the fourth-largest tobacco producer, behind only China, India and the United States. Tobacco companies with Russian operations include British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Philip Morris International.

Another strategy the government will use to reduce smoking is a gradual increase to the tobacco excise tax to be more in line with European rates in five years. This year, Russians may see a 44 percent jump in cigarette taxes.