Historic Tobacco Legislation in Israel: What happened and what next

Landmark tobacco control legislation was passed in Israel on Dec. 31rst, 2018. Regulations concerning marketing and advertising were substantially strengthened to address all tobacco, nicotine and smoking products, including electronic cigarettes, which were previously largely unregulated. The changes occurred following years of attempts which culminated in successful last-minute efforts to promote the legislation just before the early disbanding of the Israeli Parliament. The changes overrode intense opposition from the tobacco lobby, and occurred despite the fact that the basic elements for prevention policy postulated by the Richmond model were not in place. The cohesive partnership between legislators, public health professionals, advocacy groups, academia, and leading journalists was critical to this success.

We analyzed the previous and new regulation progress in the context of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and MPOWER (Monitor, Protect, Offer, Warn, Enforce, Raise) measures. Despite the extensive progress achieved with this legislation, many of the measures are not included in the MPOWER scoring system. Furthermore, MPOWER score only improved by one point in one measure. The FCTC provides a much more comprehensive framework in evaluating tobacco control measures, yet currently does not specifically includes vaping products.

This legislation is an extraordinary leap in tobacco control policy for Israel. It is now time to prepare for careful implementation and enforcement of the new legislation; develop a rigorous monitoring system to track population use of tobacco and nicotine products and policy implementation; and plan for further strong measures, which should include increasing the minimum age for tobacco sales to 21 instead of 18, restricting flavors in all tobacco and nicotine products, graphic warnings on smoking products, including the print press in the advertising ban, and wise regulation of non-combustible products, in order to prevent death and disability due to tobacco use.