Odesa restaurants named the worst in terms of compliance with smoking ban law

The All-Ukrainian Campaign "Smoke-Free Youth" in partnership with the Center for Civic Representation "Life" presented the results of public monitoring of 500 cafes, bars and restaurants in seven cities of Ukraine, including Odesa.

According to the campaign's press service, in addition to Odesa, cafes, bars and restaurants in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Rivne, Vinnytsia and Ternopil were monitored.

Themonitoring lasted from November 2024 to February 2025. Volunteers checked whether the restaurant industry complies with anti-tobacco legislation, which prohibits any advertising of tobacco products, as well as smoking of tobacco products, e-cigarettes and hookahs in all premises of restaurant establishments. Starting in 2022, this list will include tobacco products for heating (so-called aikos).

In the end, the researchers concluded that the vast majority of establishments - 82% on average - comply with the ban on smoking all tobacco and nicotine products indoors. However, the situation varies by region - for example, Odesa has one of the worst rates, with only 74%, while Rivne and Lviv have 90%.

According to the researchers, the most commonly smoked products are e-cigarettes (84%), heating cigarettes (83%), and hookah (79%). Classical cigarettes were smoked in only 13% of violations. Most hookah venues also allowed smoking one or more types of tobacco products. In Odesa, the most commonly smoked tobacco products during violations were acos and their analogues (100%), e-cigarettes (94%), hookah (56%), and classic cigarettes (17%).

Only 9% of the restaurants, cafes, and bars that the researchers checked in seven cities had smoking ban notices or stickers that looked like they complied with the law. In Odesa, only 3% of establishments had a sticker that complied with the law, and another 21% did not have a sticker that looked like it did.

In 84% of the inspected restaurant establishments, there was no advertising of tobacco products, devices for heating tobacco or hookahs. In Odesa, this figure is 84%. Instead, violators in Odesa most often used advertising through social media posts about hookah smoking (73%), the presence of hookahs in paper or electronic menus (64%), part of the signage depicting a hookah (9%), the presence of cigarettes, HTPs or devices in paper or electronic menus (9%).

At the end of 2024, the Supreme Court of Ukraine confirmed in a case that offering hookah in restaurants is a sales promotion. Under the current legislation, this is punishable by a financial penalty of UAH 30,000 for the first violation and UAH 50,000 for the repeated violation, with each individual object of violation identified.

Кирило Бойко