TITLE:
Banning Smoking in Public Places under Ethiopian Legal Framework: Some Evidences from Hawassa City
AUTHORS:
Edilu Shona
KEYWORDS:
Banning Smoking, Tobacco Threat, FCTC, FMHACA, Legal and Institutional Framework, Proclamation, Tobacco Control Directive, Second-Hand Smoke (SHS), Hawassa City
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.8 No.4,
December
27,
2017
ABSTRACT: Despite the fact that banning smoking in public places has been justified for smoking poses massive problems of health, welfare and ecology on both smokers and SHS elsewhere in the world, the issue of smoke banning in Ethiopia has not attracted the attention of researchers and the academics. Therefore, the overriding objective of this article is to explore legal and institutional frameworks banning smoking in public places to combat smoking as a public threat in Ethiopia. The study was predominantly undertaken through doctrinal legal research methodology. Accordingly, more than 15 proclamations, regulations, directives and legal notices on tobacco control were reviewed as primary legislative sources. Various international treaties and conventions and WHO reports, journal articles and books have been explored as secondary data. The result of this research revealed that legal restriction and controlling of tobacco product was introduced 90 years ago and banning smoking in public places is a recent phenomenon introduced in 2013 by virtue of Regulation No. 299/2013 and Ethiopia ratified the FCTC to strengthen the campaign. But enforcement of these legal measures flawed due to the existing laws allow smoking in designated area and failed to implement despite the implementation is proved being ineffective of protecting the SHS elsewhere. On top of that, it is found that there is no clearly defined legal and administrative measure to be taken if the law is not complied. Institutionally, some evidences in Hawassa city revealed that the department of health is not in a position to enforce smoke banning legislation due to lack of clear measures against noncompliance, lack of capacity, nonexistence of local ordinance at the regional level and lack of clearly defined duties and responsibilities of the enforcing organs. Therefore, this study concluded that banning smoking in public places under Ethiopian legal framework is not comprehensive and not effectively implemented to ensure its basic objectives of protecting the public from tobacco threat in general and SHS in particular.