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Where there is smoke, there is fire, goes the old adage except in Kenya as in other parts of the world a more apt saying would be "where there is smoke, there is a tobacco company!"

Jack Wambulwa Makhanu of Busia, Western province is an extremely enraged farmer if his letter to The People On Sunday "Farmers want this cigarette company out") in which he claims to be writing on behalf of farmers in Bukhayo North Walatsi ward.

Amongst his grievances for asking an unnamed tobacco company based in Thika to leave are that "they have cost the community environmentally and also made them poor because of under-payment".

He goes on to rage that all this comapny does is "to manipulate them" by underpaying them without ever assisting the community, destroying trees without replacement and even failing to attend a tree-planting ceremony to which they were invited and not even sending seedlings.

Makhanu points out that "treating of tobacco has cost our people's lives and we cannot continue."

This gentleman if he happens to be a tobacco farmer must be a very brave or very annoyed fellow. This is because all over the world, Kenya included, since cigarette companies and leaf dealers are the only buyers of tobacco, most farmers rarely criticise company practises though on the inside they are seething at underpayments and the fact that they are reduced to living like paupers and perpetually indebted to tobacco companies.

BATs website concedes that wood is used in two-thirds of the comapany growing operations and this too in 20 countries and at least ten of these use wood for half or more of their curing processes.

As far back as 199 a senior BAT official in kenya was quoted in John Madeley, "British American Tobacco: The Smokescreen," in Hungry for Power, thus, "The comapny is shouting about massive tree planting, but this I am afraid is nothing less than an outrageous attempt to viel the whole problem. There can be no argument that trees in the tobacco-producing areas are being felled willy-nilly and that in the not too distant (future), there won't be any left at all. The problem is that BAT, as well as the farmer can get away with it, and they do.&qout;

Makhanu is also spot on when he pinpoints tobacco sickness costing farmers their lives healthwise. Sample this: "You are on duty in the emergency room in a rural hospital. At about 10.30 p.m. a 33-year-old white male is brought into the room by his wife who says: "He's really sick. I had to get all over him to make him come to the emergency room. He couldn't even drive himself. I am scared."

The wife tells you he has vomited six times in the last three hours and can't keep anything down. the patient complains of nausea, dizziness, weakness and being shaky. he says he feels awful. the patient denies chest pain and has no history of heart trouble..major illnesses, alcohol intake and is on no medications... On questioning, you find the patient has been harvesting tobacco all day from 8.00 pm and the day before...As you are about to continue your examination the patient vomits on you and the floor.

The vomitus is a clear yellow fluid with no apparent blood. Scary? This excerp is from an actual questionnaire about green tobacco sickness designed by Kentucky regional Poison centre to test physicians and nurses.

In Golden Leaf, Barren Harvest published by the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids in 2001, Samson Mwita Marwa a Kenyan tobacco farmer and MP brings in another aspect.

"Due to the twin fact that a lot of valuable land space and quality time allocated to tobacco growth, food production suffers. As a result, Kuria district has joined arid and semi-arid areas as an area constantly in need of famine relief food. Furthermore, the strained land is becoming ever more unproductive as repeated farmign of tobacco has sucked any nutrients there may have been in the land.

The people of Kuria, rather embarrasingly, are back to suffering from diseases associated with low nutritional levels such as marasmus, kwashiorkor, etc., a situation that could be remedied if more land and time were committed to food production...if there is one single crop that has subjected children to excruciating, mostly forced labour, it is tobacco. At the peak of the season, children are withdrawn from school to work on the tobacco farms.

This work is not however reflected in solid financial commitements on the side of parents to better their children's education.

The time has come to seriously look at the tobacco industry and its products with a fresh and sober eye. While all educated people know that tobacoois destructive for use and our fellow Kenyans why don't we do away with it and fin altenative crops? Of what use is our education if we cannot pass foward a relatively simple message to our fellow men>

The health sector in Kenya spends over shillings 18 billion treating tobacco diseases caused by tobacco and yet the taxes the governement gets from the sale of tobacco are less than one third of this. The tobacco farmers live in abject poverty and tobacco farmers are dying like flies, (tobacco as stated by the director -general, WHO, is the only product which, if used as prescribed, actually kills.)

Why then are we addicted to this product which is against our interests whichever way you look at it driving us to the grave financially and physically? Who is actually profiting from this trade?

In 200 BAT's chief executive officer, Martin F. Broughton's salary was $1.9 million or in "Kenya money" a round figure of Shs. 10.48 million per month or an obscene Shs 28,721 per day.

David Ogot snr. is a freelance journalist/producer with personal experience with alcoholism. He can be reached at goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com website: www.goinghomekenya.org