October 12, 2009 was the National No Tobacco Day celebrated for the first time in Armenia. This day in 2004, the National Assembly of Armenia ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. To emphasize the importance of this action, by the request from the Coalition for Tobacco Free Armenia (a union of 31 NGOs), the RA Government announced October 12 as the National No Tobacco Day.
To celebrate the National No Tobacco Day, the National Oncology Center [after Fanarjyan] and the State Pedagogical University [after Abovyan] launched their new programs to assure smoke free hospital and university. This has been done in close collaboration with the Center for Health Services Research and Development at the American University of Armenia and Johns Hopkins Institute for Global Tobacco Control (JH IGTC) as part of the Epidemiology and Intervention Research for Tobacco Control in Armenia project aimed at reducing second hand smoke (SHS) exposure in Armenia. This project is supported by FAMRI Center of Excellence in Translational Research at Johns Hopkins.