The streets of Yekaterinburg have recently been enlivened with a number of billboards featuring a baby whose back is used for snubbing out a cigarette. The image was completed with a slogan, ‘Smoking in children’s presence hurts them even worse. Don’t you care?’ This social service announcement drew great public attention, and the municipal authorities couldn’t help noticing it as well.

‘Yekaterinburg municipal council placed an official inquiry with the Moscow-based firm that was responsible for distributing the billboards in Yekaterinburg and asked to have the announcements removed,’ says Director of Mayor’s Information and Analytics Department and Deputy Head of Yekaterinburg Administration Sergey Tushin.

‘We believe such billboards could do damage to children’s emotional health and moral development,’ he explains.

Tushin reports the council is about to place the set of documents regarding the content of the announcement with Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service.

‘Unfortunately, the division has not yet reacted to the phone calls and complaints of the locals, who asked to do something about the scandalous images,’ he notes.

In fact, the same baby-and-cigarette billboards appeared in several Russian regions (including Sverdlovsk Region and Perm Territory) at the beginning of March 2010.