Kenya Gets Graphic With Nicotine Pouch Warnings

The Kenyan Ministry of Health has announced new regulations requiring vapes and nicotine pouch products to display graphic health warnings. While this practice is common for cigarettes, it’s surprising to see it applied to reduced-risk products like pouches and vapes.

What’s going on?

Are graphic health warnings effective?

Graphic health warnings are a big component of the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The UN agency has an exceptionally significant influence on tobacco control policies in developing countries, where obsequious governments and health bodies carry out their bidding without question.

When compared with text-only warnings, graphic pictures of the physical tolls of smoking do seem to be effective. Studies show that pictorial warnings are better at grabbing attention and eliciting disgust. This phenomenon is not surprising.

That said, it’s hard to quantify how impactful graphic warnings are on smoking rates. Other research suggests they have a positive effect, but how do you separate that from other measures that drive down smoking rates, such as price increases or the presence of smoking alternatives, like vapes and pouches?

A paper from 2011, titled The Impact of Cigarette Pack Design, Descriptors, and Warning Labels on Risk Perception in the U.S, makes an interesting observation. While initially, graphic warnings do influence risk perception and intention to quit among smokers, their effects soon diminish as users become desensitised to the images.

Kenyan Ministry of Health’s graphic warnings

While it might be heavy-handed and garish, as demonstrated above, there is some merit to using graphic imagery to ward people off smoking. There is no shortage of evidence for the ills of smoking and the physical destruction it causes. However, when it comes to harm reduction products like vapes and pouches, that same body of work does not exist.

For the Kenyan Ministry of Health, this creates something of a problem. How do you provide photographic evidence that something is harmful to health when it’s not really harmful to health? The answer, of course, is by lying.

Have a look at some of the images that they plan to use for their warnings. Also, please excuse the quality of the images; they were pulled from a photocopied PDF.

This image is repurposed from a graphic health warning for smoking.

This one will also be used for cigarettes and smoking-alternative products.

This one is just in bad taste.

Desensitised smokers

We mentioned earlier about research that suggests smokers become fatigued by grotesque images. But what happens when people see harms attributed to vapes and pouches that are wholly inaccurate?

Violating public trust in this way can have dire consequences. It destroys the credibility of both health bodies and governments because it’s an admission that you are prepared to lie and push propaganda to achieve your aims.

Now, to be clear, this is common behaviour in tobacco control circles. This paper from January shows just how far these people will debase themselves to win hearts and minds.

One of the images here is of anti-smoking campaigner Barb Tarbox’s final moments being used to pretend this can happen from vaping. It’s as ironic as it is disgusting to use this image outside its intended context. How many people have died from smoking who would have lived long and healthy lives if vapes or pouches were readily available in their day?

Final thoughts

In late 2023, we wrote about a Kenyan MP’s attempt to ban pouches on spurious grounds. Fast forward to today, and their approach to these life-saving products is just as ridiculous.

It’s not too much to ask that product graphic warnings should accurately depict the health problems they cause. The most perverse and confusing part is that vapes and pouches help smokers avoid these consequences. If anything, these images could be used to entice people to transition to vapes.

Kenya needs to rethink its approach to harm reduction products. Perhaps they should read Tobacco Harm Reduction’s latest report, The Tale of Two Nations Vol 2, which compares Kenya and Sweden’s dramatically different smoking policies if they’re serious about the health of the nation.