The View From There

By Walter Kish

Up In Smoke




During the 15-minute walk I take every day from my office to my apartment in Kyiv, I pass by no less than half-a-dozen ladies, usually elderly babushkas, sitting near high-traffic pedestrian locations with a tray of cigarettes on their laps, doing a brisk business selling smokes.
A pack of the domestic variety can be had for up to two-and-a-half hryvni, or about fifty to seventy cents Canadian. American brands such as Camel or Winston can be had for four or five hryvni, or just over a dollar a pack, while premium brands like Davidoff command a price-tag of about two dollars a pack. Canadian smokers would undoubtedly drool at these prices. If you are really stretched for cash, these ladies will even sell you an individual cigarette for ten kopeks – two or three cents Canadian.
It is little wonder that so many Ukrainians smoke. Some 37 percent of the adult population, 62 percent of all men and about 16 percent of women, lights up on a daily basis. What is particularly disturbing is that the trend has been rising in recent years. The corresponding figures from five years ago were 58 percent of men and 14 percent of women. By comparison, the corresponding rates for Canadians are 23 percent of all men and 18 percent of all women.  
The raw numbers are staggering. According to the Alcohol and Drug Information Centre of Ukraine (ADIC), Ukrainians smoke some 70 billion cigarettes every year or 1,700 per Ukrainian adult. Despite the relatively low excise taxes, at least in comparison to most Western countries, the Ukrainian government still rakes in about 600 million hryvni in tobacco tax revenues.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the tobacco industry in Ukraine has come to be dominated by foreign firms, primarily Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, British American Tobacco (BAT) and the German company Reemtsma. Although sales have been growing steadily, local production has declined drastically to about 3,000 tons. In 1987, Ukraine grew 28,000 tons of tobacco. More than 40,000 tons of tobacco is imported every year into Ukraine.
Tobacco advertising is everywhere:billboards tout the “sophistication” inherent in smoking a particular brand. It is estimated that some 60 percent of all billboard advertising in Ukraine is for tobacco or alcohol products.
Over the past decade, there have been a number of efforts to introduce legislation to curb or ban tobacco advertising; however, the tobacco companies, with their large financial clout and strong lobbying efforts, have been able to derail most of them. They may not be able to do so for too much longer. The European Union has imposed very strict tobacco control regulations, and if Ukraine continues on its track to join that august organization, it too will have to fall into line in this area.
The irony of this situation is that Westerners were originally introduced to the modern cigarette on Ukrainian soil. When French and British troops joined their Turkish counterparts in the trenches of the Crimean War, they picked up the Turkish habit of rolling their leftover bits of tobacco in used newspaper and brought the innovative technique back to Europe with them.
The effects of all this tobacco consumption, of course, are deadly – over a 100,000 Ukrainians die every year from smoking-related diseases. According to a recent World Health Organization study, this accounts for approximately 13 percent of all mortality in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, even non-smokers are affected, since there are few provisions in Ukrainian law requiring non-smoking areas in public places, and where regulations exist, they are seldom enforced. A visit to a typical restaurant or bar will leave the non-smoker literally gasping for air. One local expert was quoted as saying that an evening in a Kyiv bar or disco is equivalent to living with a smoker for a month. Having visited many of Kyiv’s nightspots, I can testify from personal experience that this is no exaggeration. I am seldom able to endure more than half an hour in one of these places before having to flee.
It strikes me as odd that in a nation as well educated, as Ukraine undoubtedly is, so many people still light up. But then, since when is any addiction ever a rational choice?