Smoking significantly diminishes the men’s potency and increases sterility risks. This is one of this year’s messages of the World No Tobacco Day that is marked on May 31, Info-Prim Neo reports Deputy Prime Minister Mihai Moldovanu will chair a conference in the Government Building, which will start at 11.30. There will be launched a nationwide awareness-raising campaign centering on smoking. The first performance against smoking will be staged at the Center of Culture “Ginta Latina” at 16.00. Entrance is free of charge. According to the first deputy head of the National Public Health Center Ion Salaru, a working group was set up to draft a bill to ban smoking in public places, even where there are special places for smoking. Smoking will be prohibited in health and medical institutions, in institutions that provide hotel services and in units selling food products. It will be possible to set up places for smoking in some companies, but smoking at the workplace, in the corridors of apartment buildings and at balconies will be banned. “I saw no other country where there are so many kiosks selling cigarettes. We will make everything possible for the cigarettes to be sold only at supermarkets,” Ion Salaru said, adding that the public servants who smoke in public places, breaking thus the law, should be punished because they give a bad example. The changes made to the Law on Tobacco and Tobacco Articles in March extended the list of places where smoking is banned and doubled the fines for selling cigarettes to underage persons and for smoking in public places. About 4,000 people die annually in Moldova from diseases associated with smoking. 10% of them are passive smokers. The lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases and strokes are among the most serious diseases caused by smoking.