Since transition, the Ukrainian tobacco industry has changed beyond recognition. The USSR tobacco industry was a state run monopoly. Strict tobacco control policies including bans on bright and attractive wrappings and significant restrictions on public smoking were followed and advertising was unheard of. In 1990, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, cigarettes were in short supply. The shortage occurred for a number of reasons: outdated manufacturing equipment, inadequate supplies of tobacco and Gorbachev’s health campaign in the late 1980s which had led to a reduction in raw tobacco and cigarette production.

As a result of this cigarette shortage, smokers in the major cities began rioting. Gorbachev arranged for Philip Morris (PM) and RJ Reynolds (RJR) to airlift 34 billion cigarettes to the region. This was the single largest export order in the history of these tobacco transnationals and enabled these companies to gain a foothold in this previously closed market.

Since then, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, British American Tobacco (BAT) and the German manufacturer Reemtsma have all invested in the Ukrainian tobacco industry. Six of 11 factories and over 90% of production are now in the hands of these western companies who have been flooding the country with heavy advertising and promotion, making effective tobacco control increasingly difficult.

These changes underpin the need for up to date data on smoking prevalence and its determinants. Although basic prevalence data has recently been published for Kiev (see Corrao MA, Guindon GE, Sharma N, Shokoohi DF, eds. Tobacco Control Country Profiles. Atlanta, GA: American Cancer Society, 2000.), the results cannot be generalised to the rest of the country.