103Over the past decades, Ukraine has managed to almost completely abandon tobacco cultivation, replacing it with economically valuable and safer crops. This has helped reduce occupational risks for workers, lower environmental pressure, and avoid dependence on raw materials. According to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, as of 2024, tobacco cultivation in Ukraine amounts to 22.5 thousand centners (2,250 tonnes). At the same time, the cultivated area totals only 1.1 thousand hectares, accounting for 0.01% of the total area under industrial crops in Ukraine.
Despite this, in late 2024–2025, legislative initiatives aimed at stimulating tobacco cultivation and introducing quotas for the use of domestically produced tobacco raw materials in the manufacture of tobacco products became more active in the Verkhovna Rada. Such initiatives reflect a model typical of the tobacco industry for creating a “broad circle of stakeholders,” whereby commercial interests of tobacco manufacturers are advanced under the guise of supporting farmers or regional development.
A publication on the updated Tobacco Tactics platform analyzes how initiatives to stimulate tobacco cultivation may pose risks to public policy, strengthen the influence of the tobacco industry, and undermine Ukraine’s implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).
We recall that actions taken in the interests of the tobacco industry violate Article 4 of the Law of Ukraine “On Measures to Prevent and Reduce the Use of Tobacco Products and Their Harmful Effects on Public Health” and Ukraine’s international obligations undertaken under the ratified WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC states: “In setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law.”
Tobacco Tactics is a project of the Advocacy Center ‘Life’, an information and thematic resource dedicated to the strategies and tactics used by the tobacco industry to influence public health policymaking in Ukraine, particularly in the field of tobacco control.