Legislative ban on flavored e-cigarette additives predictably failed — Philip Morris
The ban on selling flavored e-cigarette additives in Ukraine introduced by the Verkhovna Rada on July 11, 2024, has failed to work in practice, as experts warned, because no one monitors compliance with the ban, said Mykhailo Poliakov, deputy general director for corporate affairs at Philip Morris Ukraine.
"In Kyiv, 9 out of 10 shopping centers have illegal vape shops. The question is, do law enforcement agencies not know about this, or do regulatory authorities not know about this?" he said at NV’s European integration-focused "Dialogues with NV" that took place last week, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.
In Poliakov’s view, by adopting such a law, parliament essentially committed to banning flavored e-cigarette additives, but this commitment failed because there is no enforcement — no control over compliance with regulations at the local level.
"That is, there is no enforcement, and there’s no point in making decisions about any bans if no one can control this ban… We found only one shopping center in the city center that doesn’t have kiosks with illegal vape shops," the tobacco company representative said. The company suffers from such illegal competition.
He emphasized that in the tobacco industry, parliament adopted all necessary legislative acts that should have combated the illegal market, but these regulations in practice either work poorly or don’t work at all because there is no force to enforce them.
"There are tax posts at tobacco factories, there is video surveillance. How did they get around this? They opened workshops three kilometers away where there are no posts, no video surveillance. They adopted a minimum price below which cigarettes cannot be sold because taxes account for more than 70% of the price. They started stamping prices from some year on packs when minimum prices were not yet in effect, and pretending this product was manufactured several years ago," Poliakov gave examples of circumventing legislative norms.
He expressed hope that with the help of international partners’ requirements, such as the IMF, attention to increasing budget revenue mobilization will still be focused on those who don’t pay taxes, while those who do pay them will not be prevented from continuing to pay them.
