Don't burn their future: Nigeria fights to control tobacco use

The Nigerian government has disclosed plans to regulate the country's tobacco market. The government emphasized the need to regulate the tobacco industry in line with best practices and Nigerian laws. This subject was thoroughly discussed during an event that held in Lagos. There the harm tobacco has caused the Nigerian economy was iterated.

Don't burn their future: Nigeria fights to control tobacco use

Prof. Ali Pate, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, explained why it now seems necessary to regulate Nigeria's tobacco industry during the formal launch of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission tobacco control advocacy campaign.

The event theme, 'Don't Burn their Future,' was held in Nigeria's commercial hub, Lagos. The Chairman of the Tobacco Control Unit, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr Malau Toma, stood in for Prof. Ali Pate, at the event, as seen in the Nigerian newspaper, The Punch.

During the event, the minister clarified that smoking damages the environment, national economies, sustainable development, and reinforcing, recycling, and extending poverty, "through several generations, especially among low-income earners who invest their monies to service their tobacco addiction."

The minister also stated that the tobacco industry, in making sure it keeps its business afloat, utilizes its resources in flooding the markets with newer products, "while often circumventing the law in tobacco advertisement, promotions, celebrity endorsements, corporate social responsibility, and recruitment of new users to replace the old tobacco users who are in transition to premature mortality."

He applauded British American Tobacco Nigeria's legal action and sanctions by the FCCPC for engaging in anti-tobacco control and anti-competition actions.

Pate said the penalty aligned with the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control's Article 19, "which requires parties to consider legislative action where necessary, to deal with tobacco industry's criminal and civil liability, including compensation where appropriate."

For anticompetitive behavior, BATN was penalized $110 million by the FCCPC in December.

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