Kenya Gathering Input on Graphic Warnings

Kenya’s health ministry is gathering public feedback on a proposal that would require cigarette manufacturers to print new graphic health warnings on packs of nicotine products, reports The Standard.

The new rules will require tobacco manufacturers to display labels covering 80 percent of the packaging of cigarettes, nicotine pouches and e-cigarettes.

“The objectives of the graphic health warnings are to increase knowledge about risks associated with tobacco use, to deter initiation to tobacco, to reduce tobacco consumption and persuade tobacco users to quit and to break the challenges of languages and the inability to read text-only messages,” said the Ministry of Health in a public notice.

Some 8.6 percent of Kenyans smoked in 2020, according to World Health Organization data. The government wants to reduce this figure to less than 5 percent by 2025.

Tobacco industry representatives contend that the proposed measure does not appropriately distinguish between cigarettes and smoke-free nicotine products, such as nicotine pouches, which they tout as less hazardous than cigarettes.

“There is a need for legislation in Kenya to separate tobacco products from nicotine products and for an appreciation of the role played by alternative nicotine-delivery products,” an unnamed official was quoted as saying. “The current graphic health warnings campaign does not distinguish between the two products.”