Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

The government's wide-ranging ideas on curtailing tobacco and tobacco advertising should be reconsidered

hat the nation’s lawmakers are trying to harass smokers.

As the media reported on April 19, the Rada passed in first reading a bill that would stiffen the rules for the production and sale of cigarettes and ban smoking in public spaces. In addition, and among other things, it would severely curtail tobacco advertising, keeping it out of print publications intended for children and off television and radio; set new standards for affixing health warnings to cigarette packages; and clamp down on tobacco products whose packaging uses words like “light” or “ultralight” that, as the bill’s sponsors see it, mislead smokers about the killer weed’s harmful effects.

Some of these ideas are better than others. Who wants to see cigarettes advertised on children’s television? But in general the bill, which was spearheaded by Our Ukraine deputies and by Health Minister Mykola Polishchuk, represents the sort of meddling in people’s personal lives that is usually the province of legislators in over-refined Western societies. It’s surprising to see it here, in a country where every other citizen seems to smoke, and in which cafe patronage seems inseparable from cigarette consumption. What will Kyiv’s bar owners think when it turns out that a significant minority – if not in some cases a majority – of their customers are suddenly banned from doing what comes naturally to them at a cafe table?

Cigarette smoking is stupid, but so are many things that shouldn’t be subject to government control. If the government wants to crack down on smoking, it could tax cigarettes. Let’s hope this bill fades away, and that Ukraine’s legislators don’t pick up the meddling habits of so many of their Western counterparts.