Spread the wordThe Africa Centre for Tobacco Industry Monitoring and Policy Research (ATIM) has urged the National Assembly to reconsider the proposed amendments to Nigeria’s National Tobacco Control Act 2015. The Centre said the so-called “Tobacco Harm Reduction” provisions sought to be inserted in the Act endanger the country’s hard-fought tobacco control gains. In a statement signed by Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA),on Sunday, ATIM backed the Nigerian tobacco control community’s rejection of the proposed changes. “But there is no need to embed a changing and contested commercial concept such as ‘Tobacco Harm Reduction’ as a statutory objective.” It stressed that such transparency was particularly important under Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC, which requires governments to protect tobacco control policies from the commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.