Report on activities of the Tobacco Control Resource Center in 2009

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.

Original TCRC materials were developed and published:

• Discussion paper on tobacco control development in former USSR countries http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/contact/tem/32.htm 

• Reviews on recent development of tobacco control legislation in Ukraine http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/contact/tem/34.htm and Georgia http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/contact/tem/35.htm 

• Critical analysis of recent tobacco taxation proposals in Russia http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru/contact/tem/33.htm 

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

Answers to tobacco industry and its allies' statements and arguments, concerning tobacco taxes, smuggling and other issues were prepared and presented:

• Answers to the news on alleged positive impact of smoking on hypertension were presented in the issue of TOBACCO AND HEALTH newsletter

Arguments against tobacco industry statements on tobacco taxation and smuggling were published by the most popular Ukrainian policy site “Ukrainska Pravda” in:

• March 2009 http://www.epravda.com.ua/columns/49c3aa516e1d4 ,

• August 2009 http://www.epravda.com.ua/columns/4a964acbc5aa0/ ,

• October 2009 http://www.epravda.com.ua/columns/4ac60378002e5/  and

• December 2009 http://www.epravda.com.ua/columns/4b17894430637/

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.

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 – 18 issues, 166 news items in total (60 Russia, 43 Ukraine, 10 Belarus, 4 Moldova, 1 Armenia, 3 – Azerbaijan, 4 – Georgia, 11 – Kazakhstan, 5 – Kyrgyzstan, 1 – Uzbekistan, 1 – Tajikistan, 12 – Latvia, 4 – Lithuania, 7 – 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 – 100 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 – 106 news items;

b) Press-releases of the NGO Coalition for Tobacco Free Ukraine http://adic-ukraine.narod.ru/coalition/pres/index.html – 30 press releases 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 22 media articles and 3 documents in Russian (texts of laws)

All information is available as 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.

• Statistical data for tobacco production, prices, employment, etc were presented for press-releases of the NGO Coalition for Tobacco Free Ukraine, see, for example http://adic-ukraine.narod.ru/coalition/pres/tobindustry2009-econom1.pdf 

New subscribers to our newsletters were recruited:

The main TCRC site http://contacttobinfo.narod.ru has more than 10,000 visitors a month and up to 537 visitors a day, visitors of the php web-site (database) not included.

In December 2009 the NGO Coalition for Tobacco Free Ukraine site http://adic-ukraine.narod.ru/coalition had more than 4855 visitors (up to 269 a day).

Other TCRC reports