Tobacco.org

• Kenyan firms challenge new smoking laws  

Hardly a month after the Kenya parliament passed a law seeking to seriously curtail use of tobacco in the country, tobacco firms have gone to court and effectively frustrated enactment of the new rules. These firms have argued that the law had 'criminalised smoking', making it hard for them to operate.

The firms wanted the enactment of the laws put on hold, saying that the provisions of the rules were unrealistic and denied them their constitutional right to make a living.

As as result the high court in Nairobi has suspended the law after an application by 2 firms mastermind Tobacco and multinational British American Tobacco (BAT) Kenya Limited until the matter is heard and determined, in a suit in which the attorney general and the public health ministry are named as defendants.

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