[cigarettes] more than cancer sticks in russia

I'm just wondering, you know, if this isn't Ulitsa Musina in my old town. It looks uncannily like it, which shows the uniformity across Russia.

The Croydonian has a post with particular relevance to me:

The Russian tobacco market has been showing a curious trend recently. The cheapest and premium class cigarette brands currently enjoy the biggest demand in Russia. Many tobacco companies focus their efforts on the inexpensive segment and resume the production of Soviet brands...

This is a major market, which can be seen at street level. Basically, if you look at the photo above, through the trees can be seen a housing block. OK, imagine coming downstairs from one of them and going out onto the street. To your left or right will be babushki and other vendors sitting on stools up against the low, wrought iron fences, selling many things but always cigarettes and semechki [seeds].

If you go for a wander, say to the left, then in the next block might be an Apteka [chemist] and some other shops. Up on the next corner is bound to be a two metre by three metre kiosk which sells ust ice-cream. No matter what the season, ice-cream is bought and consumed and let me tell you that, apart from the artificial western brands, there is the real local stuff, crammed with cream.

There'll be ciggie sellers here too. Now, if you multiply this by the number of towns and cities in Russia, remembering that cigarettes are like we drink tea here and you'll see what a huge money-spinner it is - bigger than drugs.

Therefore, any move into the lower end of that market is not going to lose. Therefore the mafia has it under control. They have everything under control, from the immigrants begging at road intersections to the smallest money-spinner.

For the consumer, the average person walking past, it's brilliant though. You needn't go to a shopping complex where the council controls the parking at a huge fee, you needn't drive to your local mall - it's right there where you want it.