387During November 2013 volunteers and activists of the Coalition attended nearly 900 cafes, bars and restaurants in Kyiv and 13 other cities in Ukraine. The monitoring covered all types of catering facilities: cafes (50%), bars (28%), restaurants (15%) and other types – pubs, breweries, billiards clubs etc. (7%).
These are the key findings of the monitoring:
1. The overall level of smoke free law implementation remains high – 90, 6% of catering points follow the law;
2. The total percentage of violations detected is 9, 4%, including 55 violations of cigarette smoking (6, 2% of the total) and 28 violations – hookah smoking (3, 2% of the total).
3. The chief violators are bars, breweries and billiards clubs – 14% of the total number of violations; then come restaurants – 10%, and the lowest level of violation was fixed in the cafes – 7%.
4. During the monitoring the volunteers also monitored the presence of promoters – consultants and/or certain types of tobacco products promotion: in 3.5% of points such promotion exists in the form of bright backlights, posters and “attractive” decoration items in the points of sale.
As a result of the identified violations activists have completed and sent about 50 complaints to the local departments of the State Inspection of Ukraine on protection of consumer rights, another 20 complaints are still being prepared.
“While monitoring, the volunteers tried to interact with the staff – waiters and bartenders about their attitude to the law. As it turned out, the vast majority of the staff members endorse the law, because now they enjoy working in safe and “smokefree” conditions and are protected from the negative effects of tobacco smoking on their health,” – commented Andrii Skipalskyi, Coordinator of Smoke Free Ukraine Project implemented by Regional Advocacy Center “Life”.
Smoke free legislation also proved that restaurant business did not suffer from such regulations. According to the experts’ reviews, national restaurant business will end up this year with 10-12% of growth.
But the major result of this law is that Ukrainians smoke less. According to State Statistics Department, the cigarette production in January – November 2013 dropped by 10% (8.7 billion cigarettes less) in comparison to the same period in 2012.