Nicotine pouches illegally reintroduced in Kenya despite 2020 ban

Lyft nicotine pouches, introduced in 2019 and banned in 2020, have since been reintroduced without authorization in Kenya under the Velo brand (from manufacturer British American Tobacco). This example is typical of the tobacco industry’s disregard for legislation and public health, while claiming to reduce the health risks of smoking.

Pouches are bags containing nicotine free base (extracted from tobacco and purified), which are placed between the gum and the lip, like Swedish snus. These products, marketed for several years in certain countries and available in several flavors, are presented by tobacco manufacturers as "alternatives" to smoked tobacco, but their effectiveness in terms of weaning tools has yet to be demonstrated.

Introduced in July 2019 on the kenyan market, Lyft pouches, produced by British American Tobacco (BAT), quickly found success among young people, following their intense promotion on social networks. Their registration by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board has however been declared illegal in October 2020 by the Ministry of Health, which considered that the presence of nicotine extracted from tobacco in these products fell under the Tobacco Control Act, in force since 2007.

A workaround for Kenya's pouch ban

The report of a study on new tobacco products, conducted by the Consumer Information Network (CIN), the Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance (KETCA) and the International Institute for Legislative Affairs (ILLA), with the support of Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products (STOP), showed that BAT violated this ban by marketing its pouches again, this time under the Velo brand. This study is based on a series of semi-directed interviews and on the study of scientific and administrative documents available on the subject.

This report confirms the tendency among tobacco manufacturers to put forward unverified arguments, such as that of an aid to quitting, and false claims, particularly concerning the declared safety of the products and their lesser consequences on health compared to other tobacco products – a traditional technique among cigarette manufacturers.

Primacy of commercial interests over public health

A clear example of such manipulation by the tobacco industry occurred in Kenya at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early days of the lockdown, BAT-Kenya paid out a sum of Ksh10.6 million[1] to the COVID-19 fund set up by the government. A few weeks later, in April 2020, tobacco products were declared by the Ministry of Industrialization, Trade and Enterprise Development as essential products. With this positionBAT approached the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) in September 2020 to obtain an excise duty exemption for its pouches for two years, shortly before the products were banned by the Ministry of Health.[2].

This example is a perfect illustration of the tobacco industry’s practices: in order to market products that are supposed to be beneficial to health, BAT-Kenya lobbied a government to continue selling its smoked tobacco products, which are widely recognized as harmful. BAT also obtained the right to have its tobacco products kept on the market during the pandemic, even though they can facilitate COVID-19 infection and cause serious complications for this pathology. The tobacco industry has also used this pandemic to consolidate its markets and expand its methods ofinfluence.

This contradiction between private interests and public health is compounded by several violations of the country's legislation (circumvention of legal reporting obligations, illicit reintroduction into the market, attempts to evade taxes in force). It also highlights the oppositions in the perception of the common good between different ministries of a nation, in this case between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Industrialization and Trade. Finally, it shows that the introduction of new tobacco and nicotine products not only aims to maintain high dividends for multinationals, but that these products also serve them to perpetuate the sale of tobacco products. All these reasons justify a complete impermeability of public policies with regard to interference from the tobacco industry, as recommended in Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Keywords: Kenya, BAT, pouches, nicotine pouches, British American Tobacco, Velo, Lyft

M.F.