Every day, Ukraine loses an average of 321 people from illnesses caused by smoking, yet tobacco manufacturers enjoy a respectable reputation among investors, and politicians and public figures openly flirt with big tobacco, yoking the country to ever more control by the cigarette barons.
And while big tobacco promotes their so-called corporate social responsibility, or CSR, these programs are nothing but cheap giveaways that don’t change the companies’ bottom lines.
“The tobacco industry is a major killer as their product not only leads to addiction, but also causes death among more than a half of the people consuming tobacco products,” said Liliya Olefir, executive director of Life, the Ukraine-based anti-tobacco advocacy center.
Olefir spoke at an Oct. 10 press conference at UNIAN information agency where she presented the global Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2019, which evaluates how tobacco industry lobbying harms public health policy around the world.
“The tobacco industry is still a massive problem for governments in moving forward to protect their countries from the massive losses suffered from the tobacco epidemics,” Bungon Ritthiphakdee of the Global Centre for Good Governance in Tobacco Control explained. “The tobacco industry may claim publicly that they are changing, but behind the scene it is fighting very hard to sabotage effective regulations.”
Where Ukraine stands
Among 33 countries reviewed regarding the tobacco industry’s interference in national policymaking, Ukraine placed 19th (1 is the best possible score). Ukraine is also 13th in terms of the tobacco industry’s interference in the policy of tobacco control. That is another warning signal: In Ukraine, the tobacco industry helps the government fight illicit trade and trafficking of tobacco products, a classic conflict of interest.
Ukraine also lacks a code of conduct for officials’ contact with the tobacco industry and only limits employees at the Ministry of Health from contacts with tobacco producers. As a result, Ukraine ranked 20th in this section of the rating.
However, Ukraine did fare well in one area. Senior government officials have not been spotted joining tobacco companies’ payrolls after retirement, so the country placed second in that ranking. However, this does not mean that relatives of policymakers or mid-level officials shun tobacco-related careers.
Anti-tobacco groups stage demonstration outside Ukrainian parliament on May 31, 2016, to promote World No Tobacco Day and pending anti-tobacco legislation. It was supposed, among other things, to introduce larger and more varied health warnings. The eighth convocation of Verkhovna Rada failed to pass any anti-tobacco laws during its tenure in 2014-2019. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Ukraine and big tobacco
Among the world’s 1.1 billion smokers, about 80% live in low and middle-income countries, according to the World Health Organization.
“The global tobacco epidemic is shifting to the developing world, where less well-resourced countries find themselves unable to counter tobacco industry exploitation,” said Dr. Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva in a World Health Organization report.
This is exactly what happened in Ukraine in the early 1990s, when the major tobacco corporations arrived in the impoverished, investment-thirsty country.
In 1993, British American Tobacco built a tobacco factory in Pryluky, Japan Tobacco International (then operating under the brand R. J. Reynolds) opened a plant in Kremenchuk, and Imperial Tobacco tapped the Ukrainian market by establishing a joint venture with a Kyiv tobacco plant. Philip Morris arrived a year later, and the company currently owns two cigarette production plants in Kharkiv Oblast.
These four major players have teamed up to form “Ukrtyutyun,” a lobbying group that operates in parliament and the presidential office, using major business associations as their lobbyists. The European Business Association and the American Chamber of Commerce regularly speak up for them as responsible foreign investors.
Big tobacco strategies
All over the world, “the tobacco industry undermines, blocks or delays government efforts to develop tobacco control policies,” the index report reads.
In Ukraine, big tobacco has recently been fighting two bills aimed at curbing the industry’s grip. One would increase the fines for smoking in public places, ban aggressive sales tactics and make the list of places where smoking is not allowed more comprehensive. The second involves banning internet advertising, increasing graphic warnings on cigarette packs, removing aroma cigarettes from the market and introducing rules for e-cigarettes mixed with herbs.
Unethical lobbying is largely responsible for Ukraine’s failures in the fight against tobacco. “In Ukraine, members of parliament have been lobbied by the tobacco industry resulting in the delayed passage of an effective tobacco control law,” states the report. As Ukrainian law does not require officials to report on meetings and cooperation with the tobacco industry, there is no mechanism to track or prevent such contacts.
Yet during the two previous years, Olefir says she and her team have, “revealed precedents when the tobacco industry violated Ukrainian laws, tried to directly influence members of parliament and public officials.”
In the previous convocation of the Verkhovna Rada, the legislature did not pass a single anti-tobacco law “due to connections of the tobacco business with the deputies,” according to Olefir.
Moreover, there are members of parliament who are overtly promoting the interests of the tobacco industry. On Oct. 10, Oleksiy Honcharenko, a medical doctor and member of the European Solidarity faction, submitted a bill aimed at preventing stricter regulation of tobacco sales. And Nina Yuzhanina, a European Solidarity member and former chairperson of the taxation committee, has become known for blocking anti-tobacco legislation in parliament. Journalist and politician Ihor Lutsenko described Yuzhanina at the press conference as “the leader of lobbyism for tobacco smoking in parliament.”
Lutsenko shed light on other legislative strategies by big tobacco, including “the massive registration of alternative bills against those aimed at decreasing smoking, speeches by members of parliament with the goal of disorienting the public, and cooperation with those media that do not shun contact with big tobacco.”
No responsibility
Countries like France, Brazil, Thailand and Iran have banned corporate social responsibility programs from tobacco manufacturers “because the industry uses these activities to clean its image, buy public goodwill and win political mileage,” the index report reads. It is high time Ukraine follows suit. Otherwise, tobacco companies will impregnate society with the idea that smoking is a normal and acceptable social phenomenon, even if somewhat dangerous.
In fact, Ukrainian authorities often accept gifts from cigarette producers. The webpage of the Kharkiv Oblast Council has been promoting Philip Morris as a responsible investor since 2010, and the director general of Philip Morris Ukraine, Michalis Alexandrakis, is given a platform on the council’s website to describe the positive impact of his company.
“We try to participate in social projects. We have three directions in which we cooperate with the state and the local authorities, such as gender equality, help during natural disasters, and third — affordable education,” he said there.
Thus, the parties have agreed to further cooperate in the spheres of inclusive education and gender issues, a cunning move by the company to position itself as Kharkiv Oblast’s strategic partner.
Shrewd hiring tactics
In terms of tactics, it goes without saying that big tobacco can afford to hire the shrewdest public and corporate relations managers in the market. Moreover, such managers sometimes turn out to be relatives of politicians or otherwise offer powerful connections in Ukraine’s political circles.
For example, Yevheniya Kobtseva, daughter of former parliament member Mykhaylo Kobtsev, worked for Philip Morris. Kobtsev previously sat on the parliamentary tax committee and has shown himself to be an active opponent of anti-tobacco legislation, lobbying to lower excise taxes on tobacco in 2016.
Nataliya Bondarenko, who was hired as the corporate affairs director for Philip Morris in Ukraine, not only offers legal knowledge and business experience, she is also deeply involved with the country’s political circles.
Tetyana Slipachuk, chair of Ukraine’s Central Election Commission, wrote the following in a LinkedIn recommendation for Bondarenko: “Nataliya… ensures successful and clear cooperation in projects both legal and those related to the drafting of laws and regulations. She has good professional contacts with external legal advisers and state officials in Ukraine and abroad… Our cooperation in legal matters… as well as in lobbying legislation initiatives was professional and beneficial for the company she works with.”
Oksana Totovytska, media coordinator of Life anti-tobacco advocacy center, and Petro Korol, a lawyer of ‘Kyiv free of tobacco smoke’ project stand in front of Ukraine’s Parliament on Sept. 18, 2018, to support the bill against popularization of tobacco, which the Parliament would vote down in May 2019. (UNIAN)
Hope for the future
Hope must persist in the battle against the big tobacco. Volodymyr Kreydenko, a newly elected member of parliament on the ballot of the presidential Servant of the People party, said during the press conference that “the ninth convocation of the Ukrainian parliament is not afraid of being blackmailed (by the tobacco industry) and is prepared to pass anti-tobacco laws to fight for the lives of children, youth and all people.”
Kreydenko also assured attendees that he and his colleagues would “pass a number of anti-tobacco laws, which would help fight lobbyism preventing the society from becoming healthier, and we are also going to lower the attractiveness of tobacco products … on sale targeting the youth.” He also promised to regulate the sale of e-cigarettes.
“The tobacco industry benefits from the lack of regulation and sells the gadgets close to schools and we see children using them without understanding the terrible damage to themselves,” Kreydenko said.
Lutsenko also suggested that Ukraine ratify the World Health Organization’s protocol to eliminate the illicit trade in tobacco products, a decision that lies in the hands of President Zelensky and the Verkhovna Rada. He noted that previous President Petro Poroshenko “in fact blocked this initiative by systematically losing the documents.”
In Lutsenko’s opinion, the delays in ratifying the protocol are “not an unpaid or accidental process, but rather a result of lobbyists’ influence.”
The experts also recommend that Ukraine ban all tobacco industry sponsorships in the guise of corporate social responsibility, cut all tax breaks and benefits for big tobacco and require public officials to disclose all contacts with tobacco industry representatives.
That will require work, according to Lutsenko. It is “a constant struggle, constant competition of technologies in advertisement, lobbyism and public relations in which we need to always be fit and actively offer asymmetric responses,” he said.
