{UAH} The Tobacco Control Bill 2014 may soon be passed into law.

The Tobacco Control Bill 2014 may soon be passed into law.

The bill, as presented to parliament, with the intention of preventing cancer, among others, may be cancerous itself. Members of Parliament must censor themselves from transporting all provisions of the World Health Organization framework convention on tobacco control, upon which the bill was premised, without adapting them to the Ugandan situation.

This bill seeks to repeal the Tobacco (control and marketing) Act Cap35 and Regulations there under, which regulate the growing and purchase of leaf tobacco, but without providing alternative regulation.

This means removing regulation on the growing, handling, storage and marketing of the leaf tobacco, which is hazardous even in its raw form. When it is not properly stored, it will pollute the environment and endanger the public health of tobacco farmers and the community as a whole. The bill has disengaged with reality to think that only tobacco smoke can be harmful to health by de-regulating the tobacco production process which can be equally harmful.

Clause 14 of the bill provides that health warnings in the form of text or pictures shall cover not less than 75 per cent of the cigarette packaging, in effect defacing the brand identity of the pack. The cancer represented by this standardisation is that it would reduce the ability to distinguish tobacco products whose packaging will now look the same, thereby making the proliferation of counterfeits easy and more profitable.

This in turn will increase the supply of tobacco products through illicit supply chains/black market, which is very attractive to the price-driven Ugandan consumer. In the end, the bill will actually promote more tobacco use and abuse.

The trade-dress restrictions on the packaging will also present a legal cancer in the form of immeasurable damages that the government may have to pay in trademark infringement law suits. This is because tobacco companies, which have been licensed but deprived of their full trademark and branding rights, are likely to sue.

The Constitution of Uganda and the Trademark Act 2010 guarantee protection of these commercial rights, which the Tobacco Control Bill is attempting to take away. In my view, the Tobacco Control Bill, in its present form, must be withdrawn. It should be reframed to strike a balance between public health concerns and other socio-economic rights guaranteed by our national and international laws to which Uganda is signatory.

In a country where malaria, pneumonia and diarhoea cause far more and faster deaths than tobacco use, which is confined to a few, withdrawing and rethinking this bill will not injure the Ugandan public interest.

Fred Muwema,
Kampala

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