The tobacco industry’s new playbook

By  Simon Mwangi

Deputy Director, Corporate Communications

Nacada

What you need to know:

• The 2024 Data on Youth and Tobacco in Africa survey found that children as young as five years old are experimenting with smokeless tobacco.
• The Tobacco Control (Amendment) Bill, 2024, represents Kenya's best chance to close the regulatory gaps that have allowed these products to flourish. 

Picture this: a new “wellness clinic” opens in your neighbourhood. It advertises discreet, flavoured treatments for “stress” and “focus”. The treatments come in sleek gadgets and colourful tins that resemble mint boxes. The clinic’s message is reassuring: these aren’t the dangerous old cigarettes your parents smoked. These are modern, clean and safe.

Now imagine that the same company running this clinic also manufactures and sells the very products that caused the stress and addiction in the first place.

That, in essence, is what the tobacco industry is attempting in Kenya. Through proxies, front groups and carefully crafted narratives, they are posturing as providers of “harm reduction” while peddling the very addiction that created the harm.

Emerging nicotine products

The Tobacco Control (Amendment) Bill, 2024, currently undergoing public participation in the National Assembly, is the response this moment demands. It introduces major overhauls targeting emerging nicotine products – vapes, e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches – that previously bypassed strict regulatory frameworks.

The proposals are sensible: limits on nicotine concentrations, child-proof containers, ingredient disclosures and a strict maximum cap of 20mg of nicotine per pouch. The Bill also restricts digital advertising and bans the sale of these products to persons under 18 years.

The industry knows exactly what is at stake. Health advocates have warned that the tobacco industry is actively mobilising submissions through front groups to paint lifesaving reforms as anti-business. This is a familiar playbook: sow doubt, cry economic hardship, demand endless consultation and hope the law dies in committee.

Roll-your-own cigarettes

Meanwhile, the data on Kenya's youth is damning. The 2024 Data on Youth and Tobacco in Africa survey found that children as young as five years old are experimenting with smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own cigarettes.

These products are not “safe alternatives”. They are carefully designed to hook a new generation. Flavours mask the harshness of nicotine, making them easier to inhale and harder to quit. Their sleek designs and discreet packaging make them easy to hide in schools, universities, and social spaces.

The Tobacco Control (Amendment) Bill, 2024, represents Kenya's best chance to close the regulatory gaps that have allowed these products to flourish. 

Mr Mwangi is Deputy Director, Corporate Communications at NACADA. simonmwangi@nacada.go.ke