Kenya - educate public on harmful effects of smoking and enforce provisions of tobacco control act..

October 26, 2009 - The war between the tobacco industry and various social organisations has gone a notch higher with lawyers allied to the African Tobacco Alliance and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids calling on the government to tighten its control legislations, to reduce the number of smokers in the country.

Rachel Kittonyo, Chairperson of the Africa Tobacco Control Alliance and Pamela Lambert, an official of Tobacco Free Kids were speaking during a tobacco control legal workshop in Nairobi, Kenya.


Chairperson of the Africa Tobacco Control Alliance (ATCA - a collection of groups and institutions working on tobacco control in Africa) Rachel Kittonyo said on Saturday that more than 18.2 percent of boys and girls in Kenya aged between 13 and 15 were currently smoking. “These are very worrying figures because in 2001 the figure was at 11 percent. This means that in a span of seven years the figure has almost doubled. If we do not do anything about it then in the next seven years, the figures will have shot up even higher,” she stated.

Pamela Lambert, an official of Tobacco Free Kids, held that a concerted educational effort on the harmful effects of tobacco between the Kenyan government and citizens would reduce the number of smokers, noting that education had seen the number of smokers in developed nations go down. “If you look at the so called developed world you will see that statistics for tobacco use are coming down. The industry is now targeting Africa as a replacement market. Therefore governments and civil societies should assist in making people aware of how dangerous smoking is,” she explained.

Ms Lambert said that women were more susceptible (compared to men) to tobacco related illnesses and added that they should be discouraged from taking up the habit.
“The likelihood of getting cervical and breast cancer increases significantly with tobacco use. We should therefore make policies that will especially discourage women from engaging in the habit and gradually bring down the tremendous deaths and diseases caused by tobacco,” she observed.

The official observed that there would be a fundamental conflict of interests when the government decided to protect the health of its citizens while the tobacco industry is out to make a profit.

“The tobacco industry exists to make money of a product that causes addiction, death and disease, but when the government formulates governing laws for this industry to protect the lives of its citizens the tobacco industry challenges them,” she said.

Ms Lambert also took issue with the industry saying it had no viable grounds for challenging laws formulated to control its products, arguing that they were causing deaths. “They should stop accusing the government of putting limits on their business. We hope that when the time comes for any court to decide what is important between the right to somebody’s life and the right of a company to put five or ten cigarettes in a packet so as to make a profit; that the court in its wisdom will choose the people’s health and well being,” held Ms Lambert.

Ms Kittonyo revealed that ATCA was working with the government to train enforcement officers whose work was to ensure that smokers only did so in designated areas. “So far we have trained 660 officers in ten towns including Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret and Kakamega on how to enforce the Tobacco Control Act (of 2007 which came into force on 8th July 2008, regulates public smoking and the marketing and sale of tobacco products in Kenya). But we are still having talks with the City Council in Nairobi to ensure that they enforce the smoking in public ban,” she noted.

Reference: Caution as more Kenyans take up smoking by SARAH WAMBUI, Capital News, 10/25/2009.

Related news briefs:
Kenya - public health officers will be involved in enforcement of smoking regulations..;
Kenya - smoking ban must be enforced - it's the law..;
Kenya - BAT declines to support charities - tobacco control laws..;
Kenya - discrepancies between local smoke-free regulations and Tobacco Control Act..;
Smoking ban starts in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya..;
British American Tobacco (BAT) - 100 years in Africa..