[Intl-tobacco] Nigeria Seeks Total ban on Tobacco Advertisement (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Title: HEALTH: Nigeria Seeks Total ban on Tobacco Advertisement

By Remi Oyo
InterPress Service

LAGOS, Sep 20 (IPS) - Nigeria is seeking a total ban on tobacco
advertisement in a bid to discourage smoking in Africa's most
populous country.

A bill, in its final stages of consideration, is already before
the House of Representatives deliberating the ban.

The bill, an amendment to an 11-year-old Tobacco Smoking
Control Decree, has the backing of medical doctors and the
Nigerian Heart Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The proposed law states that no package containing tobacco
products meant for smoking shall be sold in Nigeria unless it has
warnings such as ''The Federal Ministry of Health warns that
tobacco smoking is dangerous to health'', or ''Smokers are liable
to die young''.

Convicted advertisers ''shall be fined not less than 200 U.S.
dollars'' or imprisoned ''for a term not less than five years''.

The bill also retains the original provisions in the 1990 act
that banned smoking in public places including cinema, hospitals,
schools, buses, trains and lifts.

The law is expected to be just as controversial as the ban
slapped last month on the advertisement of tobacco products on
television and in stadium and other sporting arena by the
Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), the
regulatory body for advertising practice.

Olu Falomo, chair of the Council, said in a statement that the
Council took the decision in response to the overwhelming evidence
globally that tobacco is hazardous to health.

Studies conducted by the Nigerian Heart Foundation between 1994
and 1998 showed that smoking-related ''hypertension is a major
risk factor for heart disease in Nigeria''.

''One third of the adult population of Nigeria (that is about
60 percent of the country's population) suffer from
hypertension,'' according to cardiologist Kingsley Akinroye, the
Foundation's Vice President.

''The risk of cardiovascular disease can be reduced through non-
tobacco smoking, healthy nutrition by limited animal fat intake
and maintenance of low cholesterol levels and the management of
stress in our lives,'' says Francesca Emanuel, a board member of
the Foundation.

She predicts that within the next 20 years coronary heart
disease will become the leading cause of both death and disability
in most countries of the world regardless of economic status.

Emanuel says rheumatic heart disease will continue to be a
major problem in developing countries ''until appropriate heart-
health promotion and preventive measures are adequately integrated
into primary health care policy''.

Not everybody, however, welcomes the ban on tobacco
advertisement. The Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria
(OAAN) says the ban will have disastrous consequences on business.

Ahmed Omisore, the Association's vice president, has accused
the Advertising Council of not involving all stakeholders in the
decision. ''Who will bear the brunt of the breach of contract
litigation if the ban becomes effective on January 1, 2002?''
Omisore wonders.

He argues that the ban would mean an abrupt end to at least two
billion naira (about 200 million U.S. dollars) annual revenue from
the tobacco industry. ''Such a loss of revenue will certainly lead
to collapse of business, loss of jobs, loss of internally
generated revenue to local governments,'' Omisore
warns.(END/IPS/AF/IP/RO/MN/01)