Advertising

Tobacco advertising was banned in 1992 by "Principles of the Legislation of Ukraine on Health Protection" and in 1994 by the President's Decree. Unfortunately the enforcement of these acts was insufficient. The issue was to clarify in the law on advertisement. The tobacco and advertising lobby persuaded the Parliament Commission on Mass Media to write a law with few restrictions on tobacco advertising. The lobby was financed by Philip Morris and other tobacco transnationals. They even prepared a document called "Questions and answers on banning the tobacco advertising in Ukraine prepared for the members of parliament in Ukraine by the Associations of independent advisers for the development of the Ukrainian tobacco industry". It stated that in case of banning Ukraine loses $400,000,000. There was, in fact, no such association. Michael Parsons, a spokesman for Philip Morris International in Lausanne, Switzerland, later acknowledged the company's authorship. The Alcohol and Drug Information Center (ADIC) checked the Associations calculations in the document and concluded they are wrong and misleading. ADIC distributed an analysis to members of parliament about the economic and other effects of the advertising ban, that pointed out the Association assumed there would be a four-fold increase in the size of the Ukrainian tobacco crop. Recently, there have been decreases in crop size (see Table 1). When the law was finally discussed in the parliament in March 1996 the health lobby was stronger and the parliament voted for banning. But the tobacco lobby spent immense money for anti-law campaign and managed to persuade the President of Ukraine to issue a veto. The final decision adopted in July 1996 was compromise: tobacco advertising is banned on radio and TV but allowed in printed media and billboards (See Appendix 1). 

At present, there is significant direct advertising on billboards and in print, as well as indirect advertising on T-shirts, plastic bags, cafe umbrellas, and little private shop lights - even trolley cars. Philip Morris and BAT top the list of advertisers, spending a combined $7 million on billboard campaign in 1997. While tobacco advertising is banned on TV, one TV channel has a special youth musical program called "Camel rock." Tobacco ads for Marlboro, Parliament and Vogue remain common in women's magazines. In 1997 Philip Morris organized two big advertising campaigns. The first, "Marlboro Adventure Team," was premised on attracting drivers to a rally; the second was called "Win a trip to America" and required participants to send in three empty packs of L&M cigarettes. Supposedly only persons older than 18 could participate in the two advertising campaigns, but Kiev was full of advertisements which pretended to be non-tobacco ads, opening the door to advertise to youth. First prize was a trip to the US for two. There were 9,000 other prizes such as bags, watches and T-shirts with L&M logos in the form of an American flag. Philip Morris also has organized a national "Person of the Year" competition that is heavily advertised in all kinds of media. Leading newspapers and TV-channels are among "information sponsors" of the competition. In 1998 ADIC-Ukraine in cooperation with other NGOs organized picket against this competition to attract public attention to tobacco sponsorship.

According to the national survey of November, 2000 49% of the respondents support a total ban of tobacco advertising and only 5% believe that is necessary to permit tobacco advertising on radio and TV.

Restrictions to smoke