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School-aged girls light up cigarettes in Kyiv this past summer. A World Health Organization-commissioned study has found that Ukraine is a world leader when it comes to underage tobacco and alcohol consumption UNIAN Tobacco and alcohol consumption among youths is growing as exposure to vices occurs at increasingly younger ages, according to a recent study

o a recent study released by the Ukrainian Institute of Social Research (UISR) conducted for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) collaborative cross-national study of 41 nations.

Unlike in 2002, when the WHO’s previous Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) was conducted, Ukrainian girls aged 11 years reported drinking hard alcohol for the first time and 15 year olds reported drinking spirits 1.5 times more frequently. As for boys, 13 year olds drank spirits 1.7 times more than in 2002 while 15 year olds were found to imbibe hard alcohol 8 per cent more.

Although the 41-nation HBSC report hasn’t been published yet, UISR’s Olga Balakireva, the Principal Investigator for HBSC in Ukraine, released a fact sheet of its 2006 findings.

The purpose of this study is to “provide evidence needed for effective policies and programs to create better opportunities for young people’s health.”

Statistics regarding underage smoking also gave reason for concern since the rates rise with age: the number of smokers for both sexes increased by 7 percent among 6th graders, 15 percent among 8th graders, 26 percent among 10th graders, 50 and 33 percent among college and university level students respectively.

“This could have drastic consequences not only for the government, as healthcare costs will significantly rise, but also for the population as a whole,” said Dr. Serhiy Potashev, Assistant of the Department of Cardiology and Functional Diagnoses at the National Medical Academy. He added, “For men, we’ll see increased cases of cardiovascular disease such as hypertension and cancer cases; for women, reproductive problems and the prevalence of cancer in gynecological areas.”

The nationwide study was conducted in April and May, 2006 with a sample size of 6,535 respondents in the sixth, eighth, tenth grades, first-year college and first-year university students regarding drug, tobacco, and alcohol use.

By the time a student entered university, only 13 percent said they had never consumed alcohol, 25 percent never smoked a cigarette and 80 percent never used any type of drug.

“As younger age groups start using alcohol and smoking cigarettes, we’ll see negative health trends develop at earlier ages,” said Potashev.

Ukraine has the second highest smoking rate (occasional and daily smokers) in Europe at 41 percent behind Greece (45 percent) according to a 2005 study of people 15 years and older conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. Sixty-seven percent of men smoke while 20 percent of women puff cigarettes, according to the study. Ukraine has, however, made declarations to ban tobacco and alcohol advertisements and ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2006 along with nearly 160 countries which requires Ukraine “to undertake a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship within five years.”

In September 2007, President Viktor Yushchenko spearheaded a forum titled, “A Healthy Nation” where he called on the nation to develop effective mechanisms and policies to combat tuberculosis, and alcohol and tobacco use among children. Moreover, Member of Parliament Valeriy Pysarenko of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc drafted a bill that would ban tobacco advertisements in print which is awaiting review by a parliamentary committee. “We had this bill ready in parliament’s previous convocation but the tobacco lobbyists set up roadblocks every step up of the way,” said Pysarenko. “These large companies put heavy pressure on individual deputies, working groups and engage the press to portray bans on advertising as bad for business,” Pysarenko lamented.

Health experts agree that a government effort is needed to reverse trends in underage drinking and smoking. Hanna Hopko, advocacy coordinator in Ukraine for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a partner of the Bloomberg Initiative to reduce tobacco use, said “banning outdoor, print and other kinds of advertising is a necessity since its been proven that smoking rates decrease at least 6 percent when such measures are taken.” Indeed, according to Ukrainian Media Monitoring, outdoor tobacco ads placed third in terms of spending at $8.13 million cumulatively, trailing only cell phone operators and retail businesses. Hopko noted that a government program which “informs schoolchildren of the negative effects of smoking, implements prevention programs at schools and promotes healthy lifestyles” will have a very limited effect without certain additional steps, such as banning smoking in public areas and workplaces, carrying out educational media campaigns on the health costs associated with smoking and introducing steeper tobacco taxes.

According to Hopko, tobacco companies are taxed too lightly for their products in Ukraine. “Tax revenues from the sale of cigarettes dropped from 3.9 percent to 1.5 percent of total budget revenues between 1999-2006 and the government’s 2.5 percent excise tax hike on cigarettes and 12.6 percent increase per liter of spirits in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, will actually result in cheaper tobacco and alcohol products for consumers – an ineffective pricing policy,” the advocate said.

According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, tobacco consumption is increasing around the world annually as developing countries are picking up the slack of declining smoking rates in developed countries. For example, in 2006, Philip Morris/Altria collected more than $48.3 billion in net revenues from international tobacco sales, compared to $18.5 billion from US tobacco sales.

The “tobacco epidemic” is fueled by ‘Big Tobacco’ profits. The three largest tobacco companies making cigarettes in Ukraine (Phillip Morris/Altria, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International) have combined annual incomes of several billion dollars and have expanded production in Ukraine. According to the Ukrtiutiun association of tobacco plants, Ukrainian cigarette makers increased production by 18 percent from January to November in 2007 year-on-year.

Regarding alcohol, Potashev said, “advertisements, especially those on TV that push ‘light’ alcoholic drinks like Shake, are misleading since they not only target younger demographics but also give the impression that lower alcohol content is less harmful. The opposite is true because alcohol is alcohol and still harms the liver, more so for the artificial ingredients contained in the mixed drinks.”

Anatoliy Viyevskiy, the director of the Ukrainian Drug and Alcohol Monitoring Center and a leading expert within the Health Ministry said the government has realized the importance of formulating an effective alcohol policy and stressed that “it should be orientated towards alcohol consumption in general and its consequences in particular and should emphasize prevention programs among children, parents and teachers in schools.”

The HBSC report on Ukraine also said that consumption of light mixed cocktail drinks hasten the pace at which youth become dependent on alcohol as well as “the decay of a person’s physical, mental, and spiritual health.”

The forty-one nation HBSC report is due in spring 2008.