The Kenyan government weakened health warnings on nicotine pouches after British American Tobacco (BAT) threatened to pull investment from a new factory it had promised to build in the country’s capital, an investigation by The Examination, Africa Uncensored and The Guardian has found.
Letters between BAT and the Ministry of Health show the government yielded to the tobacco giant’s demand to sell Velo with significantly smaller health warnings and without mentioning potentially cancer-causing toxicants present in the products. The letters are among a series of documents obtained by The Examination that reveal the industry’s influence over policy in the country.
