2023-07-21 17:00:39
Flavored tobacco is now banned in Ukraine. A law, adopted on July 11, 2023, prohibited the production and sale of these products, in the form of electronic cigarettes and standard cigarettes. Existing stocks can be marketed for another year. The text also prohibits the promotion of smoking in general.
The government’s motivation is above all linked to public health considerations. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in four citizens smokes in Ukraine. Among these users, 22% smoke flavored cigarettes, and consist mainly of women and minors. The latter mainly turn to electronic cigarettes, seen in Ukraine as “cigarettes for children”supposedly not harmful, explains Dmytro Kupyra, executive director of the public health center Zhyttya. “Only 3% of adults smoke it, while among young people aged 13 to 15, the rate is 20%”he adds.
To win the support of public opinion, the authorities might have played on the nationalist fiber. Despite numerous calls to cease their activities in Russia – a country whose army has been waging a war of invasion in Ukraine for a year and a half – the main tobacco multinationals, Philip Morris International, Japan Tobacco International and British American Tobacco, remain present on this market. The products of Imperial Brands, another tobacco “major” and the only one to have officially withdrawn from Russia, are still on sale in this country. “Tobacco companies working in Russia help maintain the regime of aggression once morest Ukraine”summarized Evgen Plinsky, a Ukrainian journalist, during a recent broadcast on television.
An unpopular decision
However, Ukraine’s new anti-tobacco law does not aim to sanction these companies. Its objective is to protect the health of people, in particular that of children and young people. “Every year, 130,000 Ukrainians die from diseases caused by smoking and 13,000 people die from passive smoking”, says the assistant to the Minister of Health, Marina Slobodnichenko. In the new law, the sale of tobacco to minors is punishable by a fine of 1,020 hryvnias (24 euros), and ten times more in the event of recidivism.
This text also serves to bring Ukrainian health legislation closer to that of European regulations, and therefore to promote Kiev’s candidacy for entry into the European Union (EU); a status that the Twenty-Seven granted him in June 2022. In Ukraine, however, this decision, which comes following the banning of hookah bars last year, is unpopular. ” With my wife, we smoke regular cigarettes outside and we vape at home or in the car. This ban will surely not make things easier “, laments Roman Andrievsky, in his forties, living in the suburbs of kyiv.
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