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{
    "id": 450247,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/450247/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 107,
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    "content": "if Prof. Kindiki framed this law with the knowledge of the old law, we can introduce an amendment to ban the sachets all together. I would be very happy. I want to go to another issue which is very important. This is the issue of setting up an Alcohol Fund; particularly, the County Alcoholic Drinks Control Fund. I am zeroing in on the county level because the implementation of this law will be at the county level. After all, we all live in counties. Therefore, having a law that applies to the headquarters or the national Government does not make sense. If you establish this law for counties, that makes a lot of sense. After this county fund is established, the Clause 126(4) says it will be used for; Meeting the capital and current expenditure relating to; (a) the operations of the county committee; (b) research, documentation and dissemination of information on alcoholic drinks in the county. (c) promoting county rehabilitation programmes that shall recognize alcoholism and as a disease and; (d) any other matter incidental to the matters recited in paragraphs a, b and c. I would eliminate (a), (c) and (d) all together. I think those can be catered for by normal funds in the country. The licensing relating to alcohol should be seen as sin tax. These are taxes for sin just like taxes on tobacco. These are sin taxes. Taxes for people going to night clubs are also sin taxes. Taxes for people visiting brothels are sin taxes. All these taxes should be put to much better use than normal expenditure. I propose that the sin taxes; whether at county or national level, should be used for health purposes. They should particularly be put in a fund that can help us deal with difficult diseases in our national like non-communicable diseases which at the moment receive very little attention in terms of Government funding but could get substantial fund from the sin tax. We attend too many Harambees for people who want to have liver and kidney transplants and cancer treatment. The expense is enormous. At the same time, we are busy drinking alcohol which leads to these diseases. We are busy smoking tobacco which causes lung cancer. So, once you begin drinking or smoking, you should pay a tax that looks after the consequences of your sin. That is very important. I will culminate all that and say that the County Fund will be used for investing into research and promotion of the use of local raw material for the manufacture of alcohol. Why do I say that? Section “b” should be used to fund treatment of non-communicable diseases. Forget about the rest of the effects. Why am I talking about research and promotion of use of local raw materials for manufacture of alcohol? This is because we have a lot of raw materials, that can be used to make alcohol but we do not use them. We have bananas, maize, guavas, tree tomato, millet, moringa and sugarcane which can make so many varieties of alcohol. If we invested this money into research for using all these raw materials for making alcohol, we would not need to import alcohol from outside. This is because that alcohol that we import from outside is made from these raw materials that we have here. If we invested in turning these raw materials into our own alcohol, then we shall be value adding, creating jobs and industrializing towards being a middle-income country by the year 2030. Why do we have to make laws controlling how Johnnie Walker comes into the county, when you have the raw materials to make your Johnnie Walker here locally? This is how Uganda Waragi started in Uganda. It became so popular that when I was a student there, if you did not The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}