The Kenyan government weakened health warnings on nicotine pouches after British American Tobacco said it would pull investment from a new factory in the country’s capital, an investigation has revealed.
Letters between British American Tobacco (BAT) and the Ministry of Health show the government yielded to the tobacco giant’s demand to sell Velo – one of the biggest-selling nicotine pouch brands globally – with significantly smaller health warnings and without mentioning potentially cancer-causing toxicants present in the products.
