FG okays six-month jail term for public smokers

The Federal Executive Council on Wednesday approved the draft of the National Tobacco Control Bill 2004 that would be sent to the National Assembly as an Executive Bill for promulgation into law.

The bill recommends a minimum of six months imprisonment or N50,000 or both for individuals that smoke outside public places designated as smoking areas.

The Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, and the Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, disclosed this to State House correspondents at the end of the meeting presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Chukwu said the penalties for corporate offenders varied from N1m to N5m and one year to two years imprisonment for the chief executives of such firms.

The minister added that all forms of advertisements of tobacco were totally banned under the proposed law.

He added that while the law forbade government from accepting gifts from tobacco firms, it also banned the firms from sponsoring any public event.

“When it finally becomes a law, 50 per cent of the packaging of tobacco is expected to be used to warn the public on the risks involved in smoking,” he said.

Chukwu said the government would set up a standing committee that would assist law enforcement agencies in implementing the law.

He said the present administration decided to work on the bill because the provisions of a similar one passed into law in 2001 were considered to be weak.

The minister listed some of the diseases linked to smoking to include cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke; cancer, especially that of the lung; as well as chronic respiratory disorder.

He recalled that a Global Youth Tobacco Survey conducted in 2008 showed that 15 per cent of children between ages 13 and 15 were already smoking and another percentage were passive smokers.

He said the Global Adult Tobacco Survey on its part showed that 10 per cent of men in Nigeria were smokers while 1.1 per cent women smoke.

This, he explained, showed that almost six per cent of adults in Nigeria smoke.

He said, “This is not the first attempt to control the use of tobacco in this country. In 1990, we had a decree which tried to place some control on the sale and use of tobacco products and in 2001, it was repealed and re-enacted to become the National Tobacco Control Act of 2001.

“The whole idea is to make it stiffer, but when in 2004, Nigeria along with other nations of the world signed the 2004 World Health Organisation framework convention on tobacco control, there was then the need to bring our laws in conformity because we, actually as a country, ratified that convention the next year which was 2005.

“So that attempt by the Executive to conform  eventually culminated in the passage of a revised or amended Act as it were in 2011 by the sixth session of the National Assembly.

“The bill is to protect Nigerians against the harmful effects of tobacco. We know that tobacco is dangerous, tobacco is the cause of many deaths and it causes so many illnesses.”