The Ministry of Health and the Tobacco Control Board have been given 14 days to respond to a petition seeking the suspension of all websites, blogs, and social media accounts of manufacturers and distributors of tobacco and related products, including shisha products, that do not display health warning labels and graphics.
Justice Bahati Mwamuye has also ordered the petitioner -- Fredrick Bikeri -- to supply the court with four bound and paginated hard copies of his petition and application.
“The petitioner shall serve the respondents with the application and the petition within the next seven days, and file an affidavit of service in that regard within 14 days. The respondents shall have 14 days to file and serve their responses,” said the judge.
The petitioner has also been permitted to file a response to the documents that will be filed by the respondents, as a response to his case. Mr Bikeri has been granted 14 days to do this. In the petition, Mr Bikeri argues that without the health warnings on social media, websites, online stores, and other public sites, Kenyans' right to information, especially the dangerous effects of tobacco-derived products have on their health is being breached.
“The applicant prays for an order suspending all smoking of tobacco and tobacco-related products in public vehicles and taxis,” he said through Elkana Mogaka and Associates Advocates.
The petitioner also wants the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) to suspend the licences and permits of all tobacco-promoting websites, social media pages, and online stores in Kenya.
In the petition filed at the Constitution and Human Rights Division in Nairobi, the petitioner wants suspension of the sale of ‘Velo’ Nicotine pouches, formerly labelled as ‘LYFT’, in the Kenyan market and all other nicotine pouches that do not conform to the packaging regulations in Section 21 of the Tobacco Control Act, 2007.
Also, the petitioner wants a halt to the sale of ‘shisha’ tobacco and shisha pipes that do not conform to the packaging requirements.
He has based his case on the fact that on May 31, during the ‘World No Tobacco Day’, the Ministry of Health observed that despite a decline in tobacco use from 12 percent in 2014 to nine percent in 2022, Kenya now faces new challenges with the rapid proliferation of Novel Nicotine and Emerging Tobacco Products, such as nicotine pouches, vapes and electronic cigarettes.
Mr Bikeri has also argued that tobacco use is an epidemic; declared as such by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the preamble to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
“It remains, therefore, an urgent need to maintain and increase the protection of the health and information awareness of Kenyans in the country,” he said through his lawyer.
He argues that Section 21 of the Tobacco Control Act, 2007 has served to ensure that health warning labels are prominently affixed on all tobacco-derived products sold or distributed within Kenya.
