The Genesis of legislation to combat illegal circulation of tobacco and nicotine-containing products. Part 2. Criminal law protection

Relevance. Illegal circulation of tobacco and nicotine-containing products undermines the country's economic security, poses a threat to public health, and displaces bona fide participants from this business. However, criminal law enforcement against the illegal tobacco market began relatively recently, and amendments to criminal law are not always proportionate and consistent with the restrictions and prohibitions established by regulatory legislation.

Purpose: to establish the evolution of criminal legislation in the area of combating the illegal trafficking of tobacco and nicotine-containing products and to compare it with the prohibitions and restrictions defined in regulatory norms.

Objectives: to determine the reasons for establishing criminal liability for the illegal trafficking of tobacco products; to assess changes and the introduction of new anti-tobacco provisions in criminal law; to establish the timeliness and comparability of regulatory and criminal legislation in combating the illegal trafficking of tobacco and nicotine-containing products.

Methodology. The article utilizes methods of analysis and synthesis, formal legal analysis, and cybernetic analysis.

Results. The formation of criminal anti-tobacco legislation can be traced back to 1999, when criminal liability was established for the illegal trafficking of excisable products and the counterfeiting of excise stamps, as tobacco products were excisable goods. The classification of these products as a separate criminal-law protection group occurred in 2014, owing to the introduction of a specialized "anti-tobacco" law. Due to the introduction of the law on regulating tobacco products (2023), the criminal law was supplemented with provisions on liability for the unlicensed sale of tobacco and nicotine-containing products (2024).

Conclusion. The development of two fundamental laws regulating the tobacco market led to corresponding adjustments to criminal legislation. However, numerous amendments to the "anti-tobacco law" over the past 10 years have not been reflected in the "anti-tobacco" provisions of the criminal law. In particular, the introduction of labeling codes in 2018 and the inclusion of nicotine products under the "anti-tobacco law" in 2019 had no impact on the changes to the "anti-tobacco" provisions of the criminal law: the corresponding amendments were not introduced until 2025.

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