Francis Moneke
10 October 2008
analysis
Effective from the 2nd of October, 2008, the Republic of India commenced enforcement of a new legislation proscribing smoking in public places.
This law is aimed at stemming the hazards occasioned by second-hand smoke, which is also known as Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS). ETS is a combination of smoke emitted by burning cigarette sticks and exhalations from the lungs of smokers.
This poisonous mixture hangs in the atmosphere and is involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers. Experts have found that ETS is very deleterious to health, causing a wide range of dangerous ailments including: cancer, asthma, emphysema and heart diseases.
People are exposed to second hand smoke largely as a result of a system that allows smoking in public places like markets, work places, restaurants, stadium, public vehicles, etc.
The new law in India, besides prohibiting public smoking, also obligates the producers and distributors of tobacco based products to ensure that the packets of their products are emblazoned with vivid images of the various manifestations in human body of the impact of tobacco.
Nigeria is faced with the same challenge of controlling the perilous impact of smoking on both direct smokers and the general public that is constantly exposed to ETS. What the Government has done is to mandate cigarette manufacturers in Nigeria to inscribe the warning "the Federal Ministry of Health warns that smokers are liable to die young" on their products.
However, there is no evidence that this bare warning has reduced, by any degree at all, the incidence of smoking in Nigeria.
On the contrary, more persons, particularly youths, are picking smoking habit everyday. Again, smoking in public places seems more of the rule than an exception in Nigeria, perhaps, aircraft cabins are the only places save from the unpleasant invasions of ETS.
Life expectancy in Nigeria remains abominably low, and environmental tobacco smoke counts as one of the key health challenges in the country.
An environment that is subjected to unbridled pollution by tobacco smoke is extremely injurious to human health. Everyday, people slump and die for inexplicable reasons, yet, we feign ignorance of the connection between this rampant casualty and wanton ETS and other environmental pollutions. Nigeria should follow the example of India to abate this phenomenal health peril.
The Federal Ministry of Health must rise to the occasion and engage legal experts to come up with a draft bill that would effectively address this dire situation, particularly as it relates to public smoking.
The new legal regime in India on smoking regulation could be understudied and adapted. Obviously, the extant warning as to the liability of smokers to die young is not working at all. Hence, such draft bill could also incorporate the new trend of pictorial communications described above to ensure that the message is driven home very well on cigarette smokers.
A point worth noting is that smoking indirectly impacts on a person's right to life, on grounds that the nicotine substance used in making cigarettes precipitates addiction, and thus drives a smoker on and on -regardless of the warnings - until he succumbs to one of the health consequences of smoking.
So, is it not permissible to argue that such a person has been deprived of his will and, and driven willy-nilly to his early miserable grave. The other side of the coin is an argument that taking to smoking ab initio is, in itself, criminal. If a person knowing full well that early death is a possible consequence of smoking, but, nevertheless, goes out of his way to take up the habit, does that not fall within the definition of attempted suicide, which is punishable under our criminal jurisprudence?
This proposition may, however, be countered on the footing that the main reason of a smoker is not necessarily to kill himself. Legal academics may find it necessary to ruminate over these questions, who knows, they could come up, in due course, with valid propositions on these seemingly vagrant questions.
Ensuing debate on these issues could culminate in a regime of torrential lawsuits - as obtains in the United States of America - where families of victims of tobacco products would move the Courts to be awarded damages against tobacco companies for deaths or permanent incapacitations of their loved ones or bread winners, as a direct consequence of using such products.
Finally, it is important to reiterate the need for the Federal Government to take urgent steps towards checkmating this long overlooked public health hazard resulting from the use of tobacco substances.
Tobacco companies in Nigeria must not view this crusade through the egocentric lenses of business profitability as a threat to their industry, but, instead, should join the debate to evolve a system of responsible use of tobacco products - particularly cigarettes. Smokers must be made to understand better the inherent dangers the habit poses to them and the general public, especially when the habit is practiced in public places.
Moneke is of Legal Resources Consortium, Lagos.
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