Report on activities of the Tobacco Control Resource Center in 2008

The monitoring of tobacco control information from FSU countries in Russian and in Ukrainian was done regularly with Internet search tools. The information was used both for issuing newsletters (see below) and for accumulating data in the database on several topics like tobacco smuggling, smoking prevalence surveys, etc.

Tobacco industry and its allies’ activities were monitored using Internet search tools, studying tobacco industry documents available online and through other means.

Special report “The lobbying strategy – to keep excises as low as possible” on tobacco industry policy on tobacco taxation in Ukraine was published in September 2008 as an issue of CONTACT newsletter http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/contact/tem/31.htm. The report is based both on tobacco industry documents available online, media reports and other documents for the last 15 years.

We also prepared and presented answers to tobacco industry statements and arguments, concerning tobacco taxes, smuggling and other issues, such as:

• Special presentation on tobacco industry involvement into tobacco smuggling was done at the round table in Kiev in October 2008;

• Answers to the news on alleged positive impact of smoking were presented in the issue of CONTACT newsletter http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/contact/tem/30.htm

• Answers to the “Ukrainian Tobacco Association” position on tobacco taxation http://adic-ukraine.narod.ru/coalition/pres/pr-060.htm 

• Answers to the tobacco industry experts on tobacco taxation were published by the most popular Ukrainian policy site “Ukrainska Pravda” in December 2008 http://www.epravda.com.ua/columns/49548f69aac5c/ and in April 2008 http://adic-ukraine.narod.ru/coalition/pres/pr-057.htm 

The following electronic newsletters were issued and sent to special mailing lists:

1/ For general subscribers:

a) CONTACT (CONtrol Tobacco ACTivist) http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/contact/index.html -- reviews on key tobacco control issues with links to information sources in different languages (in Russian) – 4 issues http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/p/show.php?id=638&type=reviews.

b) WE DO NOT SMOKE -- http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/fsu/index.html digest of online news materials from FSU countries, media articles in Russian with comments on some of them – 20 issues, 173 news items in total (74 Russia, 22 Ukraine, 5 Belarus, 3 Moldova, 8 Armenia, 7 – Azerbaijan, 1 – Georgia, 11 – Kazakhstan, 9 – Kyrgyzstan, 1 – Uzbekistan, 1 – Turkmenistan, 16 – Latvia, 10 – Lithuania, 5 – Estonia).

c) NOSMOKING -- http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/ns/index.html digest of news materials from GLOBALink and other international sources (translated into Russian) – 12 issues – 106 news items.

2/ For Ukrainian subscribers only:

a) FOR TOBACCO FREE UKRAINE - http://adic-ukraine.narod.ru/coalition/bul/index.html digest of online news materials from Ukraine, media articles in Ukrainian – 12 issues – 99 news items;

b) Press-releases of the NGO Coalition for Tobacco Free Ukraine http://adic-ukraine.narod.ru/coalition/pres/index.html – 9 press releases and Manifesto against Smoking were published.

Earlier started databases of tobacco control news, documents and materials were maintained, and additional materials were accumulated.
 In addition to the news items used in the newsletters, during the reporting period we collected 30 media articles http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/p/books.php?type=articles and 5 documents in Russian (texts of laws, FCTC guidelines) http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/p/books.php?type=docs and 3 WHO press-releases http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/p/books.php?type=press 
 All information is available from database through several key entries (topic, country, etc) at the site http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/p/ with links to other relevant web-sites.

TCRC provided expertise in response to requests by the tobacco control advocates from Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.

New GLOBALink members and subscribers to our newsletters were recruited:

The main TCRC site http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru has more than 12,000 visitors a month and up to 874 visitors a day, visitors of the php web-site (database) not included.

December 2009 – 10625 up to 537 visitors a day, visitors of the php web-site (database) not included.

In January 2009 the Coalition site http://adic-ukraine.narod.ru/coalition had more than 3300 visitors (up to 174 a day).

Other TCRC reports