The industry has found apparently independant people (here the "President of People’s Right To Truth in Public Communications, an NGO based ) willing to trump "personal responsibility" rather than lawsuits. A classic countermove.
Source: Punch
Much ado about tobacco (2)
It shouldn’t take a Nostradamus to foresee a situation where, if this trend continues, Lagosians will soon start going after big eateries like Mr. Biggs, Sweet Sensation and Tantalisers, among others. In the light of the risk of such imminent eventuality, with all sense of responsibility, I would not subscribe to aggressive advocacy and lawsuits as opposed to dialogue on issues of concern. There is much to be leveraged on when stakeholder consultation is chosen as a first option.
For me, the debate on smoking largely boils down to personal responsibility, and this is what most anti-tobacco proponents have failed to realise. For instance, studies in the US shows that about two million Americans quit smoking every year. This represents about four to five per cent of the total number of smokers in the country and is as a result of the surgeon general’s warning on the health hazards of smoking, which began in 1964. Same goes for Europe, where studies have shown that one in three Europeans quit smoking every year; with the UK registering the highest percentage of quit attempts (46 percent). Again, this shows that it is all about personal decisions and the will to quit.
I strongly feel that the most sensible approach is for all concerned, including NGOs and politicians, to focus more on helping people who want to quit to be able to achieve that. This is what NGOs is South Africa and elsewhere are doing. There, they don’t go about suing the tobacco industry and demanding for money from the legitimate businesses which the country itself gave a license to operate and from which huge revenues are obtained.
I know that fighting tobacco was not contained in any campaign promises made to Lagosians. This is because ‘tobacco fight’ was never the most pertinent issue affecting the people of Lagos. And it isn’t now either. The prevalence of insecurity of life and property attributable to the huge tide of armed robberies, malaria, bad roads, epileptic electricity supply, lack of potable water, area boys nuisance, flooding due to poor drainage, poor waste disposal in Lagos and all the regimen of social ills were the main topics that became political campaign issues a few months back. What are our legislators doing to address them? How many bills have been sponsored, as of now, aimed at addressing these challenges in order to transform Lagos into the city of our dream?
I am confident that if the real objective is to help Nigerians, then the best approach is for legislators to concentrate on introducing stricter legislation, like what we’ve seen in the U.S., to regulate the tobacco industry and monitor and ensure compliance. Moreover, if we really don’t want tobacco companies, then governments across all tiers should stop inviting them to Nigeria to invest and could, in effect, pass a law to close down existing cigarette factories in Nigeria altogether. This way, we can achieve something concrete. But a situation where the government invites them to invest, collects taxes and levies from them and then turns back and sues them for money, and trigger a media furore about it, smacks of political hypocrisy, immorality and an “I want a share of the booty syndrome.” All these at the expense of the common man.
I believe that all concerned should concentrate on more meaningful initiatives such as cessation programmes for smokers and public awareness campaigns about the health risk of tobacco. These will help change public attitude towards smoking. As I said earlier, we can even seek an outright legal ban on tobacco manufacturing, sale and consumption. Truly, the current strategy of trying to recoup money from the industry is immoral. From the scanty unconvincing data made available currently, it could only lead to assumptions that the lawsuit is a grand design to make some NGOs and politicians richer, while the common man continues to get screwed.
It is time that all people who are really interested in the health of the common man contribute to this debate. After all, it was Martin Luther King who said that “the most dangerous thing is an idea when its is only one.”
Concluded.
-Babatunde is President, People’s Right To Truth in Public Communications, an NGO based
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