CEASE — Compliance with and Enforcement of Anti-Smoking policies in Ethiopia — is given as an example project of the Tobacco Control Research unit of the Ethiopian Organization for Cancer Prevention and Research (CPR – Ethiopia). Its subject is how Ethiopian tobacco law works in practice: whether a bar in a given town is smoke-free, whether a retailer checks identification before selling, and what happens when neither occurs.
The law the project measures against
Proclamation 1112/2019 brought tobacco under the Food and Medicine Administration Proclamation. Ethiopia reported to WHO in 2025 that it has 100% smoke-free public places, colour graphic health warnings covering more than 70% of the front and back of packs, a ban on both direct and indirect advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and a minimum sale age of 21.
By 2024, all eight categories of public venue WHO tracks — health facilities, schools, universities, government offices, indoor offices, restaurants, bars and public transport — were recorded as completely smoke-free. In 2018, three of those eight were, several of the rest permitting separate enclosed smoking rooms. That change is what the law provides and what the government reports; how it operates venue by venue is a separate measurement, and it is the one CEASE is named for.
Why second-hand smoke is the outcome to watch
Smoke-free law exists to change what other people breathe. Exposure to second-hand smoke at home and at work is a standard domain of the national tobacco survey, and it is the outcome a compliance study connects to.
Second-hand smoke is an established cause of lung cancer. On Global Burden of Disease 2023 estimates, published in 2025 and carried in WHO’s tobacco fact sheet (opens in a new tab), more than 1.6 million of the people tobacco kills each year are non-smokers who breathed other people’s smoke.
Enquiries
Enquiries about CEASE, including from researchers working on compliance and enforcement measurement, can be sent to cancer.prev.ethio@gmail.com. The collaborate page sets out what we research.