•The Health ministry is proposing to have graphic health warnings across both traditional tobacco products and modern nicotine products.
•The move that has been rejected by players in the industry as well as stakeholders across the value chain.
The Kenyan tobacco industry is calling on the government to undertake an evidence-based comprehensive review of the Tobacco Control Act, 2007.
This is to accommodate new tobacco-free alternative products, saying that such an assessment would accord cigarette smokers access to reduced-risk alternatives that would help them switch from smoking.
This follows the publication of draft graphic health warnings for tobacco products by the Ministry of Health, seeking to enhance existing health warnings on the use of traditional tobacco products such as cigarettes and tobacco-free nicotine products such as vapes, and nicotine pouches.
However, the Kenya tobacco industry is raising concerns with the blanket approach to these proposals, saying that the current law is inadequate to support application of graphic health warnings on tobacco-free nicotine products.
Founded on evolving consumer preferences including a need to address the health impacts of smoking, the tobacco industry has rolled-out products deemed less risky as they do not contain tobacco, and neither are they combusted to release toxicants that cause diseases as in the case of cigarettes.
Speaking in Eldoret during a public participation workshop hosted by the Ministry of Health, to discuss the proposed health warnings, BAT Kenya’s scientific engagement manager, Douglas Weru, said the current Tobacco Control Act formulated and enacted in 2007 is inadequate to support the government's move.
"Is it adequate? No, it's not, because there have been a lot of changes since 2007 to today. There are newer reduced-risk products that have come up, so the law should be amended to accommodate these new product categories,” Weru said.
The industry is further calling on the government to ensure that the proposed health warnings are factual, science-based, and not misleading to consumers, adding that most of the proposed images do not correlate with the products for which they are proposed.
“We are looking at information that does not mislead the user, is factual, and evidence-based. Some of the images we have seen do not correlate at all with the products… The message coming through from stakeholders in this public participation sessions, and which we agree with, is that the images should correlate to the risk associated with the product,” said Weru.
Kenya’s retail industry under the umbrella of the Retail Trade Association of Kenya (Retrak) has also said the proposed graphic warnings for modern nicotine products are not anchored in law.
Through its CEO Wambui Mbarire, Retrak said that for the draft graphic health warnings to be adopted for modern nicotine products such as nicotine pouches, electronic cigarettes, and vapes, the law would need to first be amended to accommodate the proposed changes.
Speaking in a separate forum in Mombasa, Mbarire said public participation exercise is moot absent of the necessary legal framework that would anchor the process.
“One of the things that have come out is that there are things that had not been captured in the law when graphic health warnings were first introduced, specifically vapes, nicotine pouches and electronic cigarettes had not been captured in the 2007 tobacco law," she said.
The Ministry of Health is proposing to have graphic health warnings across both traditional tobacco products and modern nicotine products, a move that has been rejected by players in the industry as well as stakeholders across the value chain.
The public participation exercise on the proposed graphic health warnings concludes on Wednesday in Machakos County.