Abstract
Objectives
After years of prevalence of smoking increase, Ukraine observes its decline. Recent tobacco control measures included smoke-free policies, new textual health warnings (THW) since late 2006, ban of outdoor tobacco advertising since January 2009 and tobacco tax increase since late 2008. The objective was to estimate potential contribution of THW to smoking decline process in Ukraine.
Methods
The study is based on a nationwide omnibus survey of 2008 Ukrainian adults (18+). Outcome measures: quitting smoking after 2006 and perception of tobacco-related hazards. To measure the exposure to THW respondents were asked to describe the warnings they recall. Multivariate regression analysis was performed in SPSS 15.0.
Results
Those who considered health hazard of smoking as serious were significantly more likely to quit. Male smokers were more likely to perceive health hazard if they recalled health warnings ‘Smoking is addictive, do not start to smoke!’ and ‘Smokers die early’.
Conclusions
THW reach those groups of the population they are aimed to and may potentially result in consequent quitting smoking in male smokers.
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Acknowledgments
The data collection was performed by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and was supported with funds from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids within the Bloomberg Global Initiative to reduce tobacco use.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.
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Andreeva, T.I., Krasovsky, K.S. Recall of tobacco pack health warnings by the population in Ukraine and its association with the perceived tobacco health hazard. Int J Public Health 56, 253–262 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-010-0226-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-010-0226-4