The following is a guest submission by Olawale Ajetunmobi

The battle over the survival of tobacco has resumed at Nigeria’s National Assembly. The committee set up by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, on Wednesday, commenced hearing on the Anti-Tobacco Bill, for which the lawmakers are seeking public opinion before passing into.

Already, interest groups have lined up arguments and memoranda in support and against the Anti-Tobacco Bill. Those in support have put forward their reasons why the government needs to place a ban on this natural product- public health concerns as primary in their argument. Those against have equally raised objections, wondering why a money-spinning trade should be asphyxiated.

Why this writer will not try to justify the logic of the anti-tobacco crusaders, it is pertinent for discerning minds to look at the issue at stake dispassionately and separate the chaff from the wheat.

Understanding the logic of the protagonists of anti- tobacco bill, they said the plant constitutes a health hazard to the society. True? This argument, placed in the realm of logic, is, perhaps, the weakest enunciated by antagonists of tobacco. The argument is weak because many believe tobacco is the “only cause” of cancer and other attributed diseases. In truth, this notion is wrong.

In biological science, we learnt that there is no substance or food material, no matter how delicious, that does not have adverse effects in body. Excessive consumption of food or any material leads to discomfort and sometime, cause terminal ailments. Medical evidence has shown that some foods are cancer-causing agents, yet people still consume such material to remain alive. If many people agree with this medical breakthrough, then every food should be banned for having adverse effects on the body.

This writer would not argue whether or not tobacco cause terminal ailments, it is instructive to note here that tobacco is just another natural plant, like vegetable, people have rights to ‘eat’. We have natural rights to eat any food to keep us alive and make us happy. Tobacco user must be free to take the plant as they deem fit for their body system.

Those who don’t smoke or use tobacco, maybe because they consider it unfit for their body, do not have “higher” rights to place unnecessary lobby on the government to ban a plant they don’t eat. For instance, I may not like a cashew or mango because it attracts flies, but this does not give me a freedom to stop others, who see such produce as nutritious fruit from consuming it.

The other reason expounded by tobacco antagonists is the fact that, smokers have no morality in taking the plant. What is morality? This is an abstract term used by inclined people to win public opinion against a way of life they detest. This opinion becomes “morality”.

However, we should ask the anti-tobacco crusader: what is “moral” about the use of the legislation to stop a people’s happiness? This is the height of intolerance.

What would the government gain from the proscription of tobacco? Nothing! What would the whole country lose if the anti-tobacco legislation is forced into the statute book? Many things! These include profits from the money-spinning commerce that engages a sizeable number of citizens, who eke out living out of trading in tobacco plant.

Then, we should ask ourselves: what would happen to companies that trade in tobacco? What would happen to their local employees if their firm is forced out of business? What happens to a citizen whose pleasure, the Constitution guarantees, but which the government, a product of the same Constitution, is taken away through another law?

While the protagonists are blinded by their untenable argument to stop the use of tobacco, there have been cases where the product is use as medicine to cure some illnesses.

In a 1958 paper, Silvette and co-workers scanned the medical press for case studies of tobacco treatments published between 1785 and 1860 and provided an overview of treatment outcomes for a range of conditions. Subsequently, G.G Stewart analyzed 128 cases and came up with the following breakdown: 97 treatments successful, 4 fatal, 10 poisoned the patient and 17 other outcomes.

Apart from pleasure, perhaps, tobacco smokers may derive other things from the intake of the plant. So, why should we deny them the right to pursue their happiness in a supposedly a free country?

Rather than proscribe the use of tobacco, the lawmakers should legislate on how irresponsible behaviour of its smokers could be coordinated, thereby stopping indiscriminate use of the plant. The lawmakers should not succumb to the wishes of the so-called morally-inclined people whose logic and ideals go against everything that prim and proper.

Killing tobacco is an injury to a section of the country’s economy from which it may not recover. We may have to deal with a large number of people that go out of jobs and those whose living would be destabilized. What would be the offence of these people?