May 31 is an Anti-Smoking Day. World No Tobacco Day was established in 1987 by the World Health Organization. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in March 2006.

This convention obliges participants to take specific measures to combat the tobacco pandemic.

According to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), millions of people die from tobacco use every year, and this number is only increasing worldwide. And the European region, in which Ukraine is located, is no exception.

The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine is constantly conducting systematic work to prevent violations of international and national legislation in the field of tobacco products, this is being worked on by operational units of the State Border Guard Service together with other law enforcement and interacting bodies. In particular, the other day law enforcement officers of the border department exposed an attempt to organize a large-scale international channel for the movement of cigarettes. Dealers tried to establish illegal supplies of cigarettes to EU countries through Ukraine and Moldova from the United Arab Emirates.

The scheme was exposed on the territory of the Black Sea fishing port. In total, more than 1.7 million packs of cigarettes worth 69 million hryvnias were confiscated. According to the analysis, violations of Ukrainian, Moldovan and international legislation were revealed. In addition, it was detected that the smuggling of cigarettes to the European Union was planned for legal sale. And such work on exposing large-scale smuggling channels continues. In addition to exposing transactions for transferring cigarettes which illegally are transiting through the territory of Ukraine, hundreds of transactions related to the smuggling of cigarettes and domestic production are revealed at the border.

As previously reported, in a total of 12 months, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine stopped the smuggling of more than 4.2 million packs of tobacco products.

According to statistics, from the beginning of May last year to the beginning of May this year, most tobacco products were detected on the border with Romania - more than 1.5 million packs. More than 670,000 packs were confiscated on the border with Moldova.  570,000 packs were tried to deliver to Poland and 500,000 packs from Belarus. A considerable number - 315 thousand packs - was confiscated by border guards on the border with Hungary.