Prime Minister Alyaksandr Turchyn suggested that Aliaksandr Lukashenka try snus to calm down. Lukashenka admitted that he sometimes feels like getting drunk.
Turchyn handed Lukashenka a small can of snus — finely ground moist tobacco — and explained that it should be placed under the tongue so that nicotine enters the body.
“So you put it under the tongue?” Lukashenka asked with interest.
“And you get a dose of nicotine,” Turchyn explained.
“So your head starts spinning?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
“Interesting. Sometimes you feel like getting drunk so your head spins and so that you don’t receive information from the Grodno region governor that his calves are dying.”
“Let me open it,” Turchyn suggested, noticing that Lukashenka could not manage the can.
“No need, I’m not going to put it in yet, why would you.”
“To calm down,” Turchyn explained.
“And does it calm you down? The main thing is that you don’t start calming yourself down with it already.”
On Wednesday, Lukashenka held a meeting with the leadership of the Council of Ministers. Among the topics discussed was tightening the licensing of trade in electronic cigarettes. Lukashenka suggested that excessive restrictions could lead to underground trade.
“I don’t really understand smoking at all, just like alcohol. So I would like specialists who either smoke or have studied this topic to explain what it is. They say it’s worse than tobacco. We will listen and make an appropriate decision. The most important thing is that I am a categorical opponent of both alcohol and smoking. But smoking is a horror. Well, you drank 100 grams there… Who doesn’t drink? People drink. But to smoke is to destroy your health, when doctors already know for sure that lung cancer — the primary cause — is smoking.
We will try to find a balance. Let us discuss it and make, as I have already said, an appropriate decision,” Lukashenka said.
The meeting also discussed the settlement of insolvency of organizations and livestock mortality. Lukashenka also returned to the issue of street lighting and said that switching the lights on 10 minutes later would make it possible to raise pensions or build new dairy farms.
