News outlets are reporting the Dnipropetrovsk regional branch of the Ukrainian Tax Service issued a reminder that disposable vaping products will soon need to pay a consumption tax.
President Volodimir Zelensky, recently signed Act No. 8287, introducing an electronic excise duty on vaping and other tobacco products, including e-liquids, beginning January 1, 2026.
“The program will make it possible to trace the movement of alcohol, tobacco products, and e-atomized liquids from manufacturer/importer to final consumer. It can also control the completeness and timeliness of the payment of excise taxes on such goods,” an article states. “Does this mean that three years from now Ukraine will have an electronic atomized consumption tax, and will also introduce a traceability system, and that mandatory labelling of alcohol and tobacco products will also be implemented in this country?”
In July this year, Ukraine said that a ban on flavored electronic nicotine-delivery system (ENDS) products other than tobacco will go into effect on July 11.
Additionally, from January 11, 2024, a combination of text and picture warnings will be required on 65 percent of the areas on both sides of the package. The fine for violations is 30,000 Ukrainian hryvnia ($812) and 50,000 Ukrainian hryvnia for each subsequent violation.
A ban on advertising e-cigarettes in Ukraine, including heated-tobacco products, goes into effect on July 11. Flavored electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS) products are also banned.
The advertising rule applies to all types of media, including the Internet, social media, public transportation, and public events.
“The advertising, sales promotion and sponsorship of electronic cigarettes, liquids used in them, and devices for consumption of tobacco products without burning them (including IQOS and glo devices) will be prohibited from 11 July 2023,” according to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
“Flavored cigarettes and flavored liquids for ENDS will also be banned at that date. Further, from 11 January 2024, the combined textual plus pictorial warnings will be required to cover 65 percent of both sides of the pack of smoking tobacco products (conventional cigarettes).”
The fine in the case of a violation is UAH30,000 ($812), and for each subsequent violation – UAH50,000. In addition, similar to the general smoking ban, the law prohibits the use of heated tobacco products in all public places and businesses.
In 2021, Ukrainian lawmakers passed the law prohibiting the use of ENDS in public places as well as advertising, sponsorship, and promotion of e-cigarettes. The law also bans the sale of flavored e-liquids other than tobacco flavors.
A group of cyber specialists is repurposing batteries from used e-cigarettes into power banks for frontline soldiers in places like forests and trenches with no access to electricity.
Working in a generator-powered office just outside Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, the volunteers work day and night to make the products that are in scarce supply, according to Channel News Asia.
“We collected electronic cigarettes (and) inside turned out to be a completely normal rechargeable lithium battery, which has its own cycle and even has a capacity higher than it says on the case,” said IT specialist Ivan Volynets, who founded Power Kit, the company producing the power banks.
“We were very surprised and decided that if we could keep collecting them, we could then make power banks and provide soldiers with these devices.”
Volunteers have so far collected more than five tons of used e-cigarettes for repurposing.
They are assisted by Ukrainian delivery service Nova Poshta, which ships discarded vaping devices to Power Kit for free.
IT specialist Dmytro said each power bank stores enough energy to fully charge a typical phone up to five times. “It also works for other equipment such as drones and radios,” he added.
The crisis in Ukraine offers an opportunity to transform tobacco use across eastern and central Europe.
By Derek Yach
Vladimir Vorotnikov, writing Vapor Voice‘s sister publication in Tobacco Reporter’s August 2022 issue, outlined how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upended well-established supply chain and business relationships that have been in effect for decades. In fact, a careful read of Balkan Smoke by Mary C. Neuberger traces the roots of these relationships way back to Bulgaria in the 1920s. Vorotnikov discussed the impact of sanctions on Russian tobacco production, the emergence of illicit trade in the region, and more recently, the reestablishment of cigarette production in Ukraine.
He does not discuss the massive growth over the past few years in new reduced-risk nicotine products—led by IQOS—across eastern and central Europe. The editor makes the point that Russia is (was) one the largest markets for IQOS. My own observations during a visit to Kyiv in late October 2021 were that a range of vape products and heated-tobacco products were readily available across the city despite posters funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies near the Parliament proclaiming that they were dangerous.
An anti-vaping poster in Kyiv (Photo courtesy of Derek Yach)
This is a time of profound transition for the region. Amid the horrors of war and the human tragedies it continues to bring to the people of Ukraine are opportunities to reduce future deaths from the single largest cause of premature death in the region—and especially among men—combustible tobacco products. As rebuilding begins—as it inevitably will—government, business and health professionals need to grasp the chance to avoid rebuilding the tobacco industry in the image of the past and rather take the high ground of health and make reduced-risk products the easily available option while phasing out combustible sales.
For governments, this means adopting risk-proportionate regulations that build on the approaches proposed by the recent Javed Khan report for the United Kingdom, and on the authorizations of a range of reduced-risk products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Ukraine and the neighboring countries relied on FDA guidance in relation to Covid vaccine advice—now is the time to draw upon their guidance to accelerate access to reduced-risk products, citing the FDA’s comments that they are deemed “appropriate for the protection of public health.”
Tax and other regulatory approaches could be applied to accelerate the transition. Further, governments of the region need to step up investments in customs and excise oversight to stop large-scale illicit trade taking hold—as it has in the occupied territories of Georgia following Russian invasion in 2008.
The Russian government also has an obligation to protect the health of its people and take regulatory steps to ensure that the progress made by Philip Morris International, Japan Tobacco International and BAT is increasing their revenue from heated-tobacco products at the cost of combustibles. Slippage with regard to these gains will translate into a return to the very high smoking rates, and associated death rates, of the past.
Government actions will be limited, though, unless the three leading tobacco companies (PMI, JTI and BAT) active in the region commit to take concerted efforts to accelerate their transition out of combustibles and publicly clarify what “withdrawing from Russia” means. Are they continuing to profit from Russian cigarette sales albeit through local companies? Are those companies obliged to push ahead with reduced-risk products, or will they revert to cigarettes?
Outside of Russia, leading tobacco companies could communicate the benefits of switching, take measures to clamp down on illicit trade and tighten youth access to all nicotine products, through joint action. Such bold actions would give them a chance to show their seriousness to transformation—something investors should reward.
United Nations agencies have a role to play at this time. Evidence emerging from inside Ukraine suggests that smoking rates have increased among those in the military and possibly among displaced peoples. This is understandable given the unprecedented stress to which people are exposed. The current U.N. response has been to ignore this reality and simply continue to support policies that ban cigarette sales during conflicts—something that is probably ignored. A far better way forward is to support people who smoke or seek nicotine to have ready access to nicotine-replacement products and approved reduced-risk nicotine products. This would mean that a generation of people may well emerge from the war with lower overall risks to their health.
War and tobacco use are intimately linked and currently interacting in dangerous ways to the health of populations. We should not wait for the transition to peace and health to begin before taking steps to accelerate the transition of smokers away from combustibles.
A global health expert and anti-smoking advocate for more than 30 years, Derek Yach is the owner of Global Health Strategies. Previously, Yach was the director of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World and a World Health Organization cabinet director and executive director for noncommunicable diseases and mental health. He was deeply involved with the development of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Ukrainian volunteers have started using e-cigarette batteries to help power drones deployed in the war against Russia, according to a report in The Independent.
The batteries are being used to power release systems attached to drones so that they can carry and drop anything from medical supplies to grenades. The release systems are built using 3D printers.
The initiative was developed in response to the rising price of lithium batteries. War-related airport closures have driven up the cost of many imports. To collect disposable e-cigarettes and retrieve lithium polymer batteries, the volunteers set up drop-off bins outside the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute
“Lithium batteries used to cost $1 each but went up five times in price adding significantly to our costs,” says engineer and PhD student Maksym Sheremet. “So we started powering dropping systems from the batteries in disposable e-cigarettes. It’s free, easy to repurpose and environmentally friendly because we are recycling.”
A team of around 60 volunteers are making the drone systems, with 30 working specifically on the e-cigarette plan.
In four months they have built 4,000 dropping systems – which cost under $30 – and are sent to the front. They are also building drones from scratch and repurposing existing commercial drones to go with their dropping systems.
Seriously outgunned by Russia, Ukraine relies heavily on drones, which allow its forces to spot artillery and so direct fire efficiently, saving ammunition.
Ukrainian lawmakers passed a new law today prohibiting the use of electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS) in public places as well as advertising, sponsorship, and promotion of e-cigarettes. The law also bans the sale of flavored e-liquids other than tobacco flavors.
In its report on vaping, published on Tuesday, the WHO speaks approvingly of the 32 countries where the sale and use of vaping devices is banned. In those 32 countries, people are still free to use combustible tobacco products, which data shows is responsible for more than 7 million deaths each year globally, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Eighty-four countries still have no bans or regulations to address ENDS, leaving them particularly vulnerable to the activities of the tobacco and related industries,” says the report, which was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the foundation started by American billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Not coincidentally, Bloomberg has been appointed the “WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries”—a largely honorary title granted in recognition of the money he spends on tobacco control and other health policy efforts, according to the WHO.
Tobacco harm reduction advocates and vaping industry representatives denounced the WHO report as “nonsensical and dangerous.”
“The WHO has a long-standing anti-vaping stance and this latest attack on a sector that is literally saving millions of lives worldwide flies in the face of scientific evidence, common sense and harm reduction,” said John Dunne, director general of the U.K. Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) in a statement.
“This report demonstrates that, sadly, the WHO still doesn’t understand the fundamental difference between addiction to tobacco smoking, which kills millions of people every year, and addiction to nicotine, which doesn’t,” said John Britton, professor of epidemiology at University of Nottingham.
