Did you know that your five-year old child has started experimenting with tobacco?
If you didn’t know, then you need to read the latest Kenya Data on Youth and Tobacco in Africa (DaYTA) report, which warns that not every flavoured products sold in the shops in your neighbourhood, are chewing gums.
The first nationally representative household survey conducted in 2024 – to examine tobacco and nicotine use among in-school and out-of-school youth aged 10–17 years, across both urban and rural areas – show that the age of children starting to experiment with smokeless tobacco has dropped from six years old to five.
This is reason enough for parents and collectively, the country to get worried, health advocates cautioned in Nairobi during the official launch of the report.
And sharing her reflections on the report – which further cautions that Kenya is facing a surge of new and highly addictive tobacco and nicotine products that deliberately target youth – Dr. Rachel Kitonyo, a Senior Tobacco Control Advisor at Development Gateway said this should be a cause of concern for parents, because at that age, they think that their children are playing with toys.
“And so, at this age of five, the first product that they start experimenting with are smokeless tobacco products. And by the time they reach the age of six years, they have now started experimenting with cigarettes,” she said.
Previously, data indicated that children were starting to experiment with tobacco products at the age of six, but this latest survey shows that the age has now dropped to five years old, with Dr. Kitonyo expressing concern that five years old is just a child who is in Pre-primary 2 (PP2), yet they’re already starting to experiment with tobacco products.
“So when you’re looking at flavors like berry, you think your child is chewing gum, yet that’s a nicotine product,” she noted, warning that these products are very dangerous because for a naked eye they look harmless.
According to the survey, 46 percent of the children said they use the smokeless tobacco products because they are safer than traditional tobacco products.
However, Dr. Kitonyo insists that the children are playing with very dangerous products, that they even don’t know their impact.
Further, she feels that another reason parents need to be concerned about is the fact that these products are readily accessible to children.
According to the study, unlike the Tobacco Control Act that requires that any establishment that sells tobacco products must verify the age of the person buying, only six percent of the adolescents surveyed have been denied buying a product because of their age.
“We all know that stopping tobacco use is very difficult, and so we need to do something about our cessation services, which include establishing adolescent friendly cessation services so that the 244,000 adolescents who are using will then decide that they need to stop,” she said.
Development Gateway (DG) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), through its Data on Youth and Tobacco in Africa (DaYTA) program, conducted the survey.
The research reveals that in 2024, 6.5 percent of Kenyan adolescents – approximately 622,000 adolescents in the general population – had tried tobacco at least once, while 2.5 percent, about 244,000 adolescents, had used tobacco in the last 30 days.
The survey findings reveal that from age five when the children start experimenting with the use of smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own (RYO) cigarettes, with this trend transitioning to trials with manufactured cigarettes, nicotine pouches and shisha at 6 years and electronic cigarettes at 9 years.
The study also found that the existing provisions of the Tobacco Control Act do not sufficiently protect adolescents–nearly 4 in 10 adolescents who had ever used any tobacco and/or nicotine product were exposed to tobacco marketing through televisions, videos, or movies.
“Despite a ban on tobacco sales to minors, they continue to access tobacco easily. Only 5.4 percent and 8.7 percent reported being denied purchase of electronic cigarettes and manufactured cigarettes, respectively,” the report says, further indicating that majority of the children, were accessing the range of smokeless tobacco products.
According to Cecilia Lubanga, a vocal advocate for tobacco control at Kenya Tobacco Control and Health Promotion Alliance (KETCHPA), the findings provide critical evidence on prevalence, patterns of use, and underlying risk factors.
“This data will ultimately equip policymakers and public health stakeholders with actionable insights to design targeted, data-informed interventions to deter youth initiation and prevent tobacco-related illnesses and deaths,” she said, noting that the unveiling of the survey findings is timely because it comes at a time when there is a shift of policy into advocacy and focusing on the youth.
“We as Kenya Tobacco Control and Health Promotion Alliance, we want to call on key stakeholders, especially the unification of various departments of government in terms of their efforts to closely monitor what the industry is doing in the name of making profits,” Lubanga prevailed upon the government, and called on key stakeholders to join hands and help in the fight against the tobacco industry’s efforts.
With the number of young people hooked on the novel nicotine products, she noted that this is an indication that it’s easy to target the youth because most of them have indicated that they are unaware of the dangers of flavoured tobacco products.
Subsequently she’s calling on the government to take a pivotal role in supporting to be aware of the harm these products can cause, and how the industry is targeting them.
“We are also calling on the government to invest in digital advocacy because from the survey there’s a good percentage of youth who have said that they’ve been exposed to these products by virtue of interacting with them from the digital space,” Lubanga said.
She says there’s need to diversify and expansion of the advocacy programs to other departments of government such as the Ministry of Gender, and Sports to be able to tap the youth with sensitization messaging.
“So there’s still a gap, and so much work that needs to be done, and it’s important that we all join hands, including communities and even learning institutions and teachers and key stakeholders, like people working in the health sector nd every other person cutting across various communities,” she said, explaining that it’s no longer a different segment issue, but communal in nature.
Currently, there are amendments to the Tobacco Control Act in Parliament, and Lubanga called on members of Parliament, to help in protecting children by fast tracking the process.
“We need to ban nicotine pouches since they are not yet proliferated in the market, because we do not need to have these products available to our children,” she said, explaining that they do not look and smell like traditional tobacco products.
It also emerged that many parents do not even know what their children are using, because the products smell like fruit.
Tobacco and nicotine product use is a major health, socio-economic and development problem in the country, killing 12,000 Kenyans annually and contributing to the various non-communicable diseases including cancer, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Adult prevalence is currently at 8.5 percent and youth prevalence is currently at 2.5 percent, translating into 2.3 million adults aged 15 years and over and 225,000 adolescents aged between 10 and 17.
Director General of Health, Dr. Patrick Amoth noted that prevalence of tobacco use in Kenya has been reducing over time, with adult tobacco use reducing from 23 percent in 2003 before Kenya ratified the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) to 8.5 percent in 2022.
Available statistics also indicate that youth prevalence has also reduced from 9.5 percent in 2007 among adolescents aged 13-15 to 5 percent in 2013. A study carried out by National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) in 2018 confirmed this downward trend indicating that adolescent tobacco use among primary school students was 3.2 percent.
The survey findings also indicated that adolescent tobacco use is now at 2.5 percent in 2025.
“These reductions are due to our adoption and implementation of effective tobacco control measures contained in the Tobacco Control Act 2007 and the Tobacco Control Regulations 2014, as well as the ban on shisha in 2017,” he said, cautioning though that the country cannot afford to rest on these gains.
“Whereas tobacco use is declining, we face a new threat from novel emerging nicotine and tobacco products such as e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches,” Dr. Amoth noted.
A recent study by NACADA indicates that use of e-cigarettes among university students is high at 5.8 percent, while use of nicotine pouches is at 4.2 percent.
“These products are particularly harmful to adolescents and young adults as they affect brain development, ability to concentrate and the nicotine addiction can lead to dual use with cigarettes,” he said, equally noting that these products are currently inadequately regulated and are being deceptively marketed as safer alternatives to traditional products.
This myth, he said is bearing fruit for the tobacco industry as 49.6 percent of users of these products believe that they are less harmful than traditional tobacco products.
“In addition, these products come with enticing flavours such as berry, mint and chocolate and appealing packaging that are clearly designed to target children,” he added, noting that currently the country is in the process of amending the Tobacco Control Act 20007 to effectively regulate novel tobacco and nicotine products.
Dr. Amoth urged the public and members of Parliament to support this Bill to better protect our children. 225,000 adolescents may seem like a small number but where minors are concerned, any child using these products is one child too many.
