As the Tobacco Control (Amendment) Bill 2024 proceeds to its second reading in the Senate, lawmakers face a clear and urgent choice: support evidence-based harm reduction strategies that can save lives — or trap 2.6 million Kenyan smokers in a cycle of addiction, disease, and early death by restricting access to safer alternatives.
Tragically, the bill in its current form appears to favour the latter.
Despite overwhelming global evidence and real-world success stories, the proposed legislation dismisses the vital role that modern nicotine alternatives — such as vapes and oral pouches — can play in helping smokers quit. Rather than promoting public health, the bill seeks to impose restrictions that would make these products harder to access, effectively pushing smokers back toward deadly combustible cigarettes.
While the Senate Health Committee’s official report on the bill has yet to be tabled, reports indicate it supports arbitrary caps on nicotine levels and bans on flavours — policies that contradict international best practices.
Evidence shows that appropriate nicotine levels and a range of adult-appealing flavours are crucial to helping smokers transition away from cigarettes. Reduce these features, and the alternatives lose their effectiveness. Smokers won’t switch — they’ll keep smoking. And they’ll keep dying.
Meanwhile, countries that have embraced harm reduction are saving lives.
In Sweden, smoking has nearly been eliminated by making safer alternatives widely available. Today, it boasts the lowest smoking rates in Europe — and correspondingly low rates of tobacco-related illness and death. In the UK, a pragmatic, evidence-led approach has helped millions quit smoking through vaping.
Kenya, however, seems determined not to learn from these proven successes.
For years, our tobacco control strategy has revolved around punitive measures — prohibition, heavy taxation, and knee-jerk restrictions on harm-reducing products. The results speak for themselves:
12,000 Kenyans die from smoking-related illnesses every year.
Two-thirds of Kenyan smokers want to quit — but few succeed.
This is not just a public health failure. It is a moral failure.
The science is clear: alternative nicotine products are significantly less harmful than cigarettes because they eliminate the burning of tobacco — the primary cause of smoking-related diseases.
A comprehensive review by the Cochrane network, one of the world’s most respected health research bodies, found that smokers who use vapes are more than twice as likely to quit compared to those using willpower alone or outdated methods.
And yet, this new bill seeks to regulate life-saving alternatives as harshly — if not more harshly — than the very products causing the harm. It’s a move that paradoxically hands a win to the tobacco industry while punishing adults who are actively trying to make healthier choices.
I speak from personal experience. For years, I tried and failed to quit smoking using conventional methods. It was only when I discovered safer nicotine alternatives that I was finally able to break free. If those options had been banned or made unaffordable, I might still be smoking. Or worse — I might not be here at all.
The very products that saved my life, and could save countless others, are now under threat — not because they don’t work, but because of outdated thinking and moralistic policies that treat adult smokers like criminals for choosing a better path.
If the Senate genuinely cares about public health, it must reject this regressive legislation.
We need a policy approach grounded in science, compassion, and common sense. One that recognises that harm reduction is not a threat — it’s a life-saving opportunity.
Let’s stop condemning smokers to the deadliest option on the market. Let’s give them a real chance to quit — and to live.
By Joseph Magero, Chairman, Campaign for Safer Alternatives (CASA)
