According to the Ministry of Health, the reason why the government needs to get involved is to make sure that all Russians have access to essential medicine.

As stipulated by the law, any new medicine will have to be registered within 210 days. Registration tariffs were lowered from 670,000 rubles to 300,000 rubles.

In addition, the drugs’ prices will be under close governmental control.

“The pharmaceutical market is not like any other, it has to do with the health of our citizens. That's why the government must be involved and regulate prices,” Diana Mikhailova, Head of Duma Committee on Pharmaceutical Market Development, told RT.

Initially it was also suggested that on every package of medicine the recommended price be printed by the producer. However, the parliament decided that Russia is too big a country, with transport costs that can vary immensely.

Another measure introduced by the law is getting rid of preliminary pre-production quality checks. Currently, there are double checks – a pre-production one and a post-production one.

Many experts are concerned that as a result, the quality of drugs will be much lower, but the Ministry of Health argues that what this measure does is actually make sure that the producers can get the product out to the market more easily.

In addition, by 2014 every medicine producing company has to comply with European standards for medicine production.

“The main aim of the law is that we have quality medicine made by domestic producers,” Mikhailova told RT.

Given that many of the companies are not likely to be able to pass all the tests, the officials say they will have to monitor that enough medicine and the right medicine is still being produced.

“We’ll have to make sure that all those drugs currently produced by companies that have no chance to switch to European standards will still be produced by other companies in the future,” Mikhailova said.

The government believes that more monitoring, more research and more checks will be needed in order to tackle the issue.