Tobacco control

Seven citizens' groups have sent a letter to the Labor Inspection Corps demanding to know whether the agency is carrying out regular checks on businesses and offices in order to impose a much-flouted smoking ban that was introduced in 2010.

A traditional study is carried out by collecting and analyzing empty cigarette packs in major cities in the country.

Data for the third quarter of last year show that the share of illegal cigarette consumption is just over 5%, reported the Bulgarian National Television. 

Then most cigarettes without banderol were found in Pernik, Vidin and Haskovo.

The trade in illicit cigarettes and tobacco in Bosnia is booming, undercutting legal products that are heavily taxed.

Turkey will launch a new anti-smoking campaign in the coming months after an increase in the number of smokers has been observed, the health minister has said, vowing a struggle with the tobacco industry through new regulations to stipulate closed and special chambers for smokers in cafes and restaurants.

The black market of cigarettes rose slightly in November 2018, to 15.4pct of total consumption, by 0.1 percentage points more than in September 2018, according to a Novel Research survey.

The annual average illicit cigarette trade in 2018 is 16.3pct, up from 16pct as it was in 2017.

A 36-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday after port authorities in Patra found more than 1.8 million illicit cigarettes stashed inside a purposely-built cache of his truck.

According to the coast guard, port authority teams searching vehicles for drugs discovered packs of cigarettes hidden inside large metallic cylinders that were attached on nine large pallets.

A court in Turkey has rejected a man who sought compensation by claiming the photo of the person seen on the warning message of cigarette packets was of him with a breathing tube in his mouth at a hospital.

Police on Thursday arrested a suspected member of a criminal gang that manufactured, packaged and sold contraband tobacco products in a factory set up in Koropi, east Attica.

Police officers raided the factory where they detained the 52-year-old suspect while he was loading a truck with machinery used to produce the illicit cigarettes.

Despite the failure of successive governments to implement a decade-old smoking ban, the majority of youngsters in Greece do not smoke, 2017 data from statistics agency ELSTAT show.

Only 12.7 percent of Greeks aged 16-24 spoke daily and 8.1 percent smoke occasionally, a reduction attributed to rising awareness concerning the dangers of tobacco.

In the European Region of the World Health Organization (WHO) only in Bulgaria the women who smoke are more than men. This was what Professor Mihail Okolyyski from the office of the world organization in Bulgaria said.

He said that in this region 28% of the adult population smoke and he also pointed out that people who smoke have a higher risk of getting a heart attack.