When he was a teenager, Bekmurad Khodjayev used to hide from his parents to smoke. Fifty years later, the Turkmen pensioner is still hiding, but this time from the police.

"I smoke in my apartment. But if I feel like smoking in town, I find a place without surveillance cameras to avoid a fine -- an alleyway, a dead end, behind some tall bushes or trees, a deserted spot," the 64-year-old builder told AFP.

The reclusive Central Asian state of seven million people, where the rate of smoking is already very low, has vowed to eradicate the habit altogether by the end of the year.

Khodjayev said he had already been fined for smoking near his home.

"Since then, I try not to get caught anymore," he said.

The target of going tobacco-free was set in 2022 by the country's supreme leader, Gurbang

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