Governors, cancer institute and Treasury pull new tobacco bill in opposite directions
The Bill would also raise pictorial health warnings from 40 per cent to 75 per cent of the front and back surfaces, mandate plain packaging, ban hawking and mobile vending, and prohibit all online sales of tobacco products, e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches.
What you need to know:
- The Bill seeks to overhaul the Tobacco Control Act to bring newer nicotine products such as electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and other electronic nicotine delivery systems under regulation for the first time alongside tougher packaging, advertising and enforcement rules for conventional tobacco.
Kenya's push to rein in cigarettes, shisha, e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches came under intense scrutiny last week as the National Assembly's Departmental Committee on Health convened a stakeholders' forum on the Tobacco Control (Amendment) Bill, 2024, drawing competing memoranda from government agencies, with each pulling the legislation in a different direction.
The Bill seeks to overhaul the Tobacco Control Act to bring newer nicotine products such as electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and other electronic nicotine delivery systems under regulation for the first time alongside tougher packaging, advertising and enforcement rules for conventional tobacco. Members of the assembly must now decide how to reconcile submissions that range from calls to weaken the Bill's centralised approach to demands to make it considerably stricter.
The bill would, for the first time, set legal limits on e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches: e-liquids capped at 20 milligrams of nicotine per millilitre, refill containers at 10 millilitres, and nicotine pouches at 20 milligrams each, with mandatory child-proofing and consistent-dosing requirements. Manufacturers would need Cabinet Secretary approval, backed by Kenya Bureau of Standards testing, before placing any new tobacco or nicotine product on the market, with decisions due within 90 days. Non-compliant products could be banned outright, and dealing in unapproved products would attract a fine of the higher of Sh1 million or 5 per cent of a company's gross turnover.
The Bill would also raise pictorial health warnings from 40 per cent to 75 per cent of the front and back surfaces, mandate plain packaging, ban hawking and mobile vending, prohibit all online sales of tobacco products, e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches, ban single-use plastics in tobacco packaging and disposable vapes, extend advertising bans to social media and influencer marketing, and require county governments to license local tobacco dealers alongside a new national dealer-registration system run by the Ministry of Health. Contravention would attract a fine of up to Sh10 million or five years in prison.
Representing the Council of Governors (CoG), Kizito Wangalwa, the Council's Director of Committees and Programmes, backed the Bill's broad public health goals but raised five devolution concerns: county representation on the new
Advisory Committee, funding for devolved health services, ambiguity in county licensing provisions, duplication between national dealer registration and county licensing, and recognition of counties' implementation and enforcement role.
The Council's sharpest objection concerns money. It noted that county governments, not the national government, bear constitutional responsibility for treating tobacco-related illness through devolved health facilities, since county health services are a wholly devolved function under Part 2, Item 2 of the Fourth Schedule. Yet the Bill, as drafted, expands the Tobacco Control Fund to cover "treatment of chronic illnesses caused by tobacco products" without creating any mechanism to get that money to counties.
Citing Article 187(2)(b), which requires that resources follow any function assigned to a level of government, Wangalwa proposed a new clause obliging the Cabinet Secretary to support counties "through conditional allocations and other intergovernmental financing mechanisms", plus a parallel clause requiring technical, laboratory and enforcement support for county public health officers policing the new e-cigarette and nicotine pouch rules, invoking the national government's Article 202(2) power to make additional allocations to counties for specific service-delivery mandates.
On governance, the Council wants county representation on the Advisory Committee institutionalised through the Council's own nomination, rather than tied to the sitting chairperson of its health committee, who changes over time.
On licensing, it flagged that Section 20A requires traders to get a licence from "the respective county executive committee member" without saying which one, a gap it warned could collide with counties' existing trade-licensing systems.
Its fix would vest licensing in county governments generally, allow it to run through existing Single Business Permit systems, and require the national dealer-registration regime to be made "interoperable" with county licensing so traders are not forced to comply with two overlapping systems.
The Council also wants Section 36, which designates the Director-General for Health as a national authority for implementing the Act, amended to specify this applies "solely for the purposes of discharging National Government functions", so as not to crowd out counties' own enforcement mandate.
The most data-driven submission came from the National Cancer Institute of Kenya (NCI-K), whose memorandum, presented and signed by CEO, Dr Elias Melly, and submitted to the Health Committee on June 24, 2026, framed the Bill squarely as cancer legislation. The institute noted that Kenya recorded 44,726 new cancer cases and 29,317 cancer deaths that year, making cancer the country's third-leading cause of death after infectious and cardiovascular diseases. It linked tobacco directly to 14 types of cancer and to cardiovascular disease, including cancers of the lung, oral cavity, larynx, oesophagus, pancreas, kidney, bladder, cervix, stomach and liver.
On the scale of the addiction problem, the institute drew on Kenya's most comprehensive tobacco survey to date, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) Kenya 2014, which found that roughly 11.6 per cent of adults, about 2.5 million people, were then current tobacco users, and that 72 per cent of daily users reached for tobacco within 30 minutes of waking, a clinical marker of nicotine dependence. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates tobacco kills more than eight million people a year, including over a million non-smokers who die from second-hand smoke.
"The emergence of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, electronic cigarettes, heated tobacco products, nicotine pouches and other novel nicotine products presents a new public health challenge, particularly among young people. Evidence demonstrates that these products increase nicotine addiction, facilitate initiation into tobacco use, and undermine decades of tobacco control gains," said Dr Elias Melly, the chief executive officer of the National Cancer Institute of Kenya.
He recommends strengthening the Bill through additional provisions, including raising pictorial health warnings to 80 per cent of packaging, five points above what the Senate passed, and setting the sales buffer around schools at 500 metres, far above the 100 metres in the current text.
Its most consequential proposal is a statutory requirement that not less than 30 per cent of all tobacco and nicotine-related tax, licensing fee and penalty revenue be ring-fenced by law for cancer prevention, tobacco cessation services, treatment support, health promotion and research, channelled through a new, parliamentarily accountable Tobacco and Nicotine Harm Reduction Fund the institute wants created from scratch.
Dr Melly also called for e-cigarettes to face the same restrictions as conventional cigarettes, a comprehensive ban on flavoured products, mandatory age verification for any residual online sales, and a full ban on all forms of tobacco advertising, sponsorship and corporate social responsibility activity by tobacco companies.
"The Institute respectfully urges the Departmental Committee on Health to incorporate the recommendations contained in this memorandum, particularly those relating to ring-fencing tobacco cessation services and protection from tobacco industry interference. These measures will substantially reduce tobacco-related cancers and other non-communicable diseases and contribute to the realisation of universal health coverage and the constitutional right to the highest attainable standard of health," said Dr Melly.
In a letter dated September 21, National Treasury Principal Secretary, Dr Chris Kiptoo, noted that the Treasury "largely concurs with the proposed amendments" but flagged five technical corrections it wants made before the Bill proceeds.
Its biggest concern is a simple drafting error: the Bill says the Advisory Committee chairperson serves an initial three-year term but can be reappointed for five years. The Treasury wants both terms set at three years.
On money, it wants a cap written into the law limiting committee expenses to three per cent of the Tobacco Control Fund's projected annual revenue, on top of whatever Parliament separately sets aside, and wants this limit reflected wherever the Bill describes how the Fund may be used.
The Kenya Law Reform Commission (KLRC) pointed out that the Bill tries to add a new definition of "advertisement" even though the term is already defined in existing law. A term should not be defined twice in the same Act, the Commission said, warning this could create confusion over which definition applies. It also objected to the proposed definition of "characterising flavour", which requires a flavour to be "clearly noticeable" before, during or after use. KLRC called that wording too subjective and warned it could weaken the flavour ban the Bill is meant to enforce. It proposed a simpler definition: any smell or taste other than tobacco that comes from an additive such as fruit, spice, herbs, alcohol, menthol or candy.
The Commission's biggest finding was that the Bill contradicts itself on smoking bans. One part permanently bans smoking on planes, ships and other public transport, while another part of the same section allows designated smoking areas on those same planes, ships and vehicles. KLRC said the second provision should simply be deleted, arguing that smoking must be fully banned in these places to protect public health and that allowing smoking areas on aircraft cancels out the ban set a few lines earlier.
The International Institute for Legislative Affairs (IILA), whose memorandum was submitted in April, remains the forum's most aggressive voice for restriction. Citing an estimated 12,000 tobacco-related deaths and Sh45 billion in annual healthcare and productivity losses, IILA wants nicotine pouches and shisha banned outright rather than merely regulated, the legal age for tobacco and nicotine products raised from 18 to 21, the school buffer zone tripled to 300 metres, and a statutory floor set on the industry's solatium contribution to the Tobacco Control Fund.
IILA has also pressed for the Bill's designated-smoking-area exemptions to be scrapped entirely in favour of a 100 per cent smoke-free standard, a position that converges with KLRC's narrower finding on the aircraft contradiction, even though the two bodies arrived at it independently and via different legal reasoning.
Thomas Lindi, CEO of the Kenya Tobacco Control and Health Promotion Alliance (KETCA), suggested drastic tax adjustments to counter a surging non-communicable disease crisis and curb aggressive, youth-targeted marketing by the tobacco industry.
To close loopholes and restore the real value of tax revenues, KETCA is advocating uniform rate revisions across all product categories from July 1, 2027. Under the proposed structure, excise duty on cigarettes would rise from Sh4,100 to Sh6,150 per 1,000 sticks. Taxes on cigars, cheroots and cigarillos would increase from Sh18,000 to Sh27,000 per kilogramme, while manufactured tobacco and tobacco substitutes would move from Sh12,550 to Sh18,825 per kilogram. For emerging alternatives, oral and inhalable nicotine products would rise from Sh2,000 to Sh3,000 per kilogram, liquid nicotine for e-cigarettes from Sh100 to Sh150 per millilitre, and the excise rate on e-cigarette devices and cartridges from 40 per cent to 50 per cent of the retail price.
The appeal comes as Kenya grapples with a severe epidemiological shift. Non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular conditions, cancers, diabetes and chronic respiratory illnesses now account for 61.7 per cent of all deaths recorded in health facilities, up from 52.4 per cent in 2024. These chronic conditions are responsible for over half of all hospital admissions nationwide, imposing severe financial strain on families. Households managing chronic diseases face healthcare costs roughly 3.3 times higher than the national average, frequently pushing families into catastrophic poverty. Tobacco use remains a direct driver of these preventable diseases, claiming more than 12,000 Kenyan lives every year.
Despite the growing health burden, Kenya's tax share on tobacco and nicotine products falls well short of international standards. The World Health Organization recommends that excise taxes constitute at least 70 per cent of the retail price of cigarettes, yet Kenya's current excise tax share remains below 40 per cent. Although the Tax Laws (Amendment) Act of 2024 harmonised rates for plain and filtered cigarettes at Sh4,100 per 1,000 sticks, the increase was too small to curb consumption or boost revenue, and subsequent legislation in 2026 left rates entirely unrevised.
Dr Catherine Karekezi, CEO of the Non-Communicable Diseases Alliance Kenya, noted that Kenya records 12,000 deaths annually, with tobacco use remaining a primary driver of preventable deaths from cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and chronic respiratory illnesses. A 2022 survey of 2,000 Kenyan patients undergoing treatment for chronic NCDs and tuberculosis revealed that 46 per cent had a history of tobacco use. Direct medical treatment costs and indirect productivity losses from premature death and carer absenteeism cost the economy Sh45 billion every year, and for every $1 Kenya earns in tobacco tax revenue, the country spends $3 treating the health and economic fallout.
While adult smoking rates declined from 11.6 per cent in 2014 to 8.5 per cent in 2022, novel nicotine products are rapidly driving a fresh epidemic among young people. The Alliance notes that while overall tobacco use among university students stands at 3.2 per cent, 5.8 per cent use e-cigarettes and 4.2 per cent use nicotine pouches. Among adolescents aged 10 to 17, an estimated 622,000 (6.5 per cent) have tried tobacco products, with 244,000 actively using them.
The Alliance attributes this surge to aggressive online marketing, attractive child-appealing flavours, discreet product designs, and widespread misconceptions that novel products are harmless.
With submissions now spanning a spectrum from the Treasury's largely technical concurrence to NCI-K's and IILA's calls for outright prohibition of some products, and the Council of Governors pressing a distinct set of devolution-based amendments, the Departmental Committee on Health faces the task of reconciling five substantially different visions of the Bill before it reports back to the House. The Committee has not yet indicated a timeline for finalising its report. Parliament is scheduled to deliberate on the Bill on Thursday, September 24.
