No Smoking

The weekend before last in Kyiv was declared smoke-free. To be more specific, Ukraine’s capital celebrated its regular anti-cigarette holiday together with the World Health Organization. On the eve of the event an Anti-Nicotine Club was opened where psychologists and doctors will take care of those who want to kick the habit. Students of the Utah Brigham Young University (Utah, US) also made their contribution to enlightening the public. The no-butts day looked quite spectacular: pupils from children’s athletic groups (see photo) demonstrated by their energy and healthy complexion all the joys of life without the evil weed, while doctors and students of medical institutes walked down Khreshchatyk on a Health March. They know the tobacco statistics better than anybody else. According to WHO data, around 50% smokers developed their passion while still teenagers; cigarettes cause 90% of all lung diseases, 28% of ischemia cases, and countries with high incomes level spend up to 15% of their health care expenses on measures connected with the consequences of smoking. Ukraine has not avoided the nicotine epidemics either. Every second man and every fifth woman in our country are smokers, with adherents of this habit becoming younger and younger: boys have their first cigarette at 8 and girls at 10-12. Ukraine occupies seventeenth place in the world in terms of tobacco consumption; 1.5% of all cigarettes produced are sold here. While in the West average smoker consumes 870 cigarettes a year, in Ukraine it is 1800.

Recently in Geneva 192 countries, Ukraine included, approved the text of the WHO Framework Anti-Smoking Convention. In the words of Health Care Minister Andriy Pidayev, it includes six major items: prohibiting the tobacco advertising and sponsoring; protecting people from smokers; fighting cigarette smuggling; regulating the tobacco commodity structure; restricting access to these coffin nails by the underage; and, finally, strict requirements for marking and packing cigarettes. At present Ukraine’s parliament is set to ratify the convention and then make a number of changes in the law.