{"id":448,"date":"2014-08-18T16:04:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T16:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=448"},"modified":"2014-08-18T16:04:24","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T16:04:24","slug":"erafoen-accuses-batn-of-deliberately-misinterpreting-tobacco-control-law-alerts-police-lagos-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=448","title":{"rendered":"ERA\/FoEN Accuses BATN of Deliberately Misinterpreting Tobacco Control Law, Alerts Police, Lagos Govt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"tobacco\"<\/a>The Environmental Rights Action\/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA\/FoEN) has alerted the Lagos State government about what it described as \u201cdeliberate misinterpretation\u201d by British America Tobacco Nigeria (BATN) of the recently-passed Lagos State law regulating smoking in public places, insisting the tobacco company was on a mission to thwart the implementation of the law.<\/div>\n
In a statement by Philip Jakpor, Head of Media in Lagos, ERA\/FoEN said a series of visibility events organised by BATN, including a sensitization exercise last week for police officers in Lagos on enforcement of the anti-smoking law were nothing more than gimmicks to confuse the public and the police.<\/div>\n
The event last week, sponsored by the British American Tobacco Marketing Nigeria Ltd, with the theme, \u201cUnderstanding the Lagos State Regulation of Smoking Law,\u201d took place at the Police Officers\u2019 Wives Association (POWA) Multi-purpose Hall in Ikeja. In attendance were senior police officers, including all the Divisional Police Officers (DPOs) of the command.<\/div>\n
Media reports said that Nkem Agboti, Regulation Counsel, British American Tobacco Marketing Nigeria Ltd, and Obafemi Agaba, Partner and Head, Brand Protection and Illicit Trade, among others, facilitated the event.<\/div>\n
Mr Akinbode Oluwafemi, ERA\/FoEN Director, Corporate Accountability, said: \u201cWe are not deceived by BATN\u2019s seeming interest in ensuring the implementation of the bill when in actual fact it is attempting to rewrite the law strictly for its commercial interests through deliberate misinterpretation of the meaning of smoke-free public places.\u201d<\/div>\n
Oluwafemi maintained that while the intent of the Lagos State government in fashioning the legislation is targeted at saving lives, the interests of BATN are strictly commercial and that BATN would stop at nothing to confuse the general public and other regulatory agencies of government that are charged with enforcing the law.<\/div>\n
\u201cIn the months since the bill was signed into law by Governor Babatunde Fashola, we have seen a host of articles syndicated across media organisations poking the law and urging so-called smokers\u2019 groups to challenge sections that protect non-smokers from the hazardous tobacco smoke. Is it not ironic that the same industry that sponsors those groups is now trying to lecture the police and the general public on provisions of the law?<\/div>\n
\u201cWe urge the Lagos State government to read the lips of BATN officials engaging in the so-called training on implementation of the law. What we hear is double-speak and outright misrepresentation of the intent and spirit of the law. The Lagos State government must wake up to its responsibility of interpreting in clear terms the letters of the law so as not to leave the citizenry in a state of confusion as intended by the tobacco industry.\u201d<\/div>\n
Oluwafemi maintained that: \u201cThis is simply unacceptable. We must again draw the attention of the Lagos State government and the implementing agencies of government at all levels to Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) which de-normalises the kind of interactions that BATN is involved in with the Nigeria Police and other agencies.\u00a0 Tobacco industry interests run counter to public health interests. The Lagos government must henceforth stamp its feet and put a rein on such exercises.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Environmental Rights Action\/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA\/FoEN) has alerted the Lagos State government about what it described as \u201cdeliberate misinterpretation\u201d by British America Tobacco Nigeria (BATN) of the recently-passed Lagos State law regulating smoking in public places, insisting the tobacco company was on a mission to thwart the implementation of the law. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[27,26],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-batn","tag-erafoen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/tobacco.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-7e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}