Jump to full article: All-Africa.com, 2006-06-11
Author: Mwiti Marete / Kigali / The New Times (Kigali)
Intro: The world over, what is vogue is fighting against this or that. Now the fighting spirit seems to be concentrated on the addictive vegetable introduced to the world by the Native Americans (Red Indians) centuries ago: Tobacco.
Recently in Kenya, the Minister for Health announced an anti-smoking ban that has caused uproar from both smokers and tobacco manufacturers. . . .
Anyhow, this article is not about whether smoking "is harmful" or actually "kills". What worries me is whether the smoker is slowly but surely having their fundamental rights violated. Well, one may be infringing on others' rights by blowing the toxic smoke in their face, but surely, doesn't one have space from where to 'enjoy' his legal poison anymore? . . .
My humble opinion is that the world community should come up with other, humane ways of achieving the 'clean air' goal. Taking a cue from the HIV/Aids fight, I am very convinced that we are winning the war because we have managed to beat stigma and discrimination first. Even with leprosy and polio, we would not have come this far if we had continued our ancestors' ways of banishing lepers and cripples to the forest to be devoured by wild beasts.
. . .
So why don't we try the same approach to smoking? Why don't we, instead of enacting laws that overtly discriminate against a particular group of people, put more emphasis on mass education, 'smokers anonymous', incentives, and price and tax increases to deter smoking? Discrimination breeds resistance. (By the way, what new grand scheme did 'they' come up with on World No Tobacco Day?)
Methinks the world community ought to drop the 'clean-air-end-justifies-murky-means' approach. Probably the reason we are not winning the tobacco war is our double standards.
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