Introduction:
Tobacco use kills around 700,000 people annually in European Union (EU). Within these countries a big number of smokers consumes cigarettes with specific characteristics (i.e. slim or flavoured cigarettes). Inclusion of the slim cigarettes ban during the last revision of the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) was broadly discussed but, unfortunately, was not finally included in the law. This study is aimed to examine the smokers' support in six EU countries for the ban on sale of slim cigarettes.

Methods:
The research analysis includes cross-sectional data on attitudes of adult smokers (n=5592) from second wave of the EUREST-PLUS ITC Europe Surveys (ITC 6E). The survey wave was conducted in 2018 in Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Spain. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis (with the use of SAS-callable SUDAAN Version 11.0.3) have been made for estimating the smokers' support for the slims ban by sociodemographic characteristics, smoking behaviours and beliefs on slim cigarettes harm and for examining specific factors associated with the support.

Results:
Support for slims ban substantially varied across analyzed countries, being the lowest in Greece (18.0%; 95%CI=13.7-23.3) and the highest in Romania (33.8%; 95%CI=29.2-38.8). Female smokers and all smokers with moderate income, daily and menthol smokers, those not planning to quit smoking as well as smokers believing that slims are less harmful than regular cigarettes were less likely to support the slims ban.

Conclusions:
This study reports that support for the ban on sale of slim cigarettes s is at low level in analyzed countries. It can result both from characteristics of smoking behaviours, including cessation plans, and from misperceptions of smokers on the harmfulness of slim cigarettes. There is an urgent need for additional research on the slim cigarettes harm and for population-based and target-tailored public awareness campaigns addressed to slim cigarette smokers.