With the beginning of the spread of electronic cigarettes and electrically heated tobacco products in Ukraine, the decline in the number of smokers has stopped.
Otto Stoiko, a doctor at the Kyiv City Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the Ministry of Health, a member of the Association of Dietitians of Ukraine, said this on the air of Ukrainian Radio, Ukrinform reports.
“Since 2005, as soon as they began to actively talk about anti-tobacco measures and the corresponding law was approved, the prevalence of smoking began to decline. I think that this is not only the influence of the law, because we do not have the same culture of compliance with laws as in the West. On the other hand, people started talking about it a lot, smoking became less fashionable. Anti-tobacco activities began to appear more, warnings appeared on cigarette packs, and people actually began to smoke less and became more conscious. Heavy smokers may say that it didn't affect them. And that's true. But it affects people who are less dependent. “They are thinking about quitting smoking,” he noted.
According to the expert, this continued until 2015-2016, when the popularity of electronic cigarettes and electrically heated tobacco products appeared.
“Since then, unfortunately, this decline in the number of smokers has stopped. Somewhere from 2017-2018, it actually remains in place. The new-fangled devices are popular in themselves and are also encouraging people, particularly teenagers, to switch to regular cigarettes. Therefore, they remain dependent on tobacco and nicotine,” stated Stoyko.
At the same time, he emphasized that electronic cigarettes are also harmful.
“The American administration, studying the damage from cigarettes, did not even give permission for the sale of electrically heated tobacco products, because out of the 53 substances they contain, 7 – cause 10 times more damage than regular cigarettes. Although the tobacco industry that did the research only took 40 of those 53 ingredients and said they were less harmful. Thus, experts are not now saying that they cause less harm. They also cause harm, it just all depends on the duration of smoking, the doctor said.
In his opinion, if research on cigarettes began after the Second World War and in the 1960s their absolute harm was proven and, as a consequence, , lung cancer, then research on these devices can be expected in 10-20 years.
«Perhaps the consequences will be less, but still – this is a threat. And the tobacco industry is doing everything to ensure that people remain dependent on these products,” Stoyko noted. As Ukrinform reported, according to a KIIS survey, today in Ukraine 30% of the population uses tobacco or nicotine products: 43% men and 20% women.
