Health Experts Deliver Damning Verdict On Kenya’s Nicotine Negativity

These are critical days in our enduring mission to reduce the deadly toll and devastating impact of smoking cigarettes.

Last week, I spoke at two separate conferences on two different continents featuring some of the world’s leading experts in the field of tobacco harm reduction.

The key message in each was simple: too many Kenyans, and millions of other people across Africa, are set to continue dying needlessly from tobacco-related diseases. Yet our continent’s policymakers seem determined to turn their back on the means to stop this happening.

At the first event in Stockholm, to which I made a presentation via video link, delegates heard how Sweden is about to become the first nation in the world to reduce its smoking rate to under 5% of its population, which is the level officially classed as ‘smoke-free’. By contrast, the smoking rate in Kenya is more than double that.

Sweden has achieved this enviable feat by making safer alternatives to cigarettes – such as vapes, nicotine pouches, and snus – both available and affordable for adult smokers.

Conference host Dr. Delon Human, the South Africa-based president of Health Diplomats, a global health consulting group, said: “Sweden is one of the world champions when it comes to tobacco control.

“If all 1.1 billion smokers (in the world) switched to one of these classes (alternative nicotine products), it would have a tremendous effect worldwide.”

In Sweden, the effect is profound. Sweden has the highest consumption of nicotine pouches and snus and the lowest smoking and tobacco-related disease rates in Europe. Tellingly, Sweden’s tobacco-related male mortality rate is 44% lower compared to elsewhere in Europe.

Many other countries in Europe employ strict rules that do not take harm reduction into consideration, which explains the stark contrast.

Africa is also adopting a negative stance on harm reduction, which is sending its smoking rates in the opposite direction to Sweden’s.

When the Tobacco Atlas report was published in May, it revealed that smoking rates have declined globally for the first time on record.

Tragically, Africa could not share in any celebrations. The report found smoking rates had actually increased in 10 countries on our continent. In most other African countries, rates remain stubbornly high.

The reason for this sorry state of affairs was laid bare at my second conference, held in Nairobi by the Harm Reduction Exchange. Delegates heard how African activists and policymakers are obstructing access to products that are saving lives around the globe.

Dr. Tendai Mhizha, Principal of Integra Africa, said misinformation and disinformation in tobacco harm reduction discourse are actually perpetuating the death and disease caused by people continuing to smoke combustible cigarettes.

“There has been a lot of disinformation surrounding the topic of nicotine and the alleged negative effects that e-cigarettes have on public health,” she said. “This has led to policies that disfavor risk-reducing products and narratives that completely deny their benefit.”

Just like the activists seeking to ban alternative nicotine products, Kenya’s policymakers are refusing to draw a distinction between tobacco and nicotine. Taxes on alternative nicotine products are so high they are priced out of reach of smokers whose lives they could save.

For instance, Kenya’s Finance Act 2022 raised the excise on nicotine pouches by 25%, while changing the structure for e-cigarettes so they are now subject to a 40% excise tax.

Instead of these products being taxed according to their relative risk, smokers are being denied the opportunity or incentive to switch to safer options. They are forced to stick with traditional cigarettes, meaning tobacco’s immense burden on public health increases.

Vapes and nicotine pouches offer adult smokers the chance to move away from deadly cigarettes to far less harmful products.

Yet these safer products are neither accessible nor affordable for African smokers. That is tantamount to condemning them to premature death.

As Dr. Anders Milton, former chairman of the World Medical Association Council, told the Stockholm conference: “We should not let people die just because they have bad habits. If we can save them, we should. It’s as simple as that.”

Related Content: Without Nicotine Alternatives, Kenya’s Tobacco Industry Is Growing

By Joseph Magero

Chair: Campaign for Safer Alternatives