Smoking shisha and selling it could by the end of this week become a criminal activity after Members of Parliament in an emergency meeting in a Kampala hotel resolved to legislate against it.
Shisha also known as a narghile or goza or hookah, mostly found in night clubs and pubs, is a water pipe with a smoke chamber, a bowl, a pipe and a hose. Specially made tobacco is heated, and the smoke passes through water and is then drawn through a rubber hose to a mouthpiece.
Regrouping last week on Friday to save the Tobacco Control Bill, 2014 after the deputy speaker of parliament, Mr Jacob Oulanya deferred it twice in as many days on the grounds that it lacked consensus, the lawmakers while trying to harmonise their positions on the proposed law also resolved in the early morning meeting to ban shisha smoking.
This means that night clubs, pubs and other social places that would sell it to revelers would be breaking the law and therefore culpable to prosecution. And likewise whoever would be caught smoking it will equally be liable to the same wrath—criminal prosecution.
Reporting by Daily Monitor
