by STEPHEN COCKBURN
Health campaigners in Senegal are celebrating the passage of tough new anti-smoking legislation.
The law makes Senegal the sixth African nation to ban smoking in almost all public places, and also includes a total ban on advertising along with the introduction of graphic health warnings on 70 per cent of cigarette packets.
Philip Morris – which makes brands Marlboro and L&M and has a factory in Senegal – admits to having lobbied ‘transparently and pro-actively’ to alter the legislation.
‘What happened here is an example of long-term resistance to tobacco industry interference,’ explains Tih Ntiabang, Africa Co-ordinator of the civil-society Framework Convention Alliance.
As regulations tighten in the West, companies are aggressively targeting African markets where laws around advertising are more lax.
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