Mali begins crackdown on shisha after grace interval expired

The authorities in Mali have begun a crackdown on hookah smoking after giving a grace interval to shisha bars to regulate to a ban.

The nation’s anti-drug company says it has carried out dozens of arrests within the capital Bamako and seized water pipes after the six-month moratorium expired.

Bars the place small teams of people who smoke — primarily younger males — hang around to speak and puff on hookahs have flourished in Bamako lately.

However their days turned numbered when the junta-dominated authorities on August 15 introduced a shock ban.

It warned that shisha people who smoke can be liable to a jail time period of 1 to 10 days and a wonderful of 300 to 10,000 CFA francs ($0.45 to $15).

The Central Narcotics Workplace (OCS) in a Fb posting mentioned there had been “vigorous” raids by its brokers in Bamako on Tuesday evening, culminating in “about 50 people in jail and a considerable amount of seized materials.”

It revealed pictures of younger women and men being taken away behind pickup vans and an image of a pile of water pipes.

“The grace interval given by the authorities for importers, distributors, sellers and shoppers of shisha in Mali is over,” the OCS mentioned.

The ban has divided opinion in Mali.

The nation is overwhelmingly Muslim, and interpretations of Islam are typically unfavourable to cigarettes and to shisha.

However it’s also a secular nation that tolerates alcohol, even when consumption is proscribed to sure public locations and most retailers and eating places don’t serve it.

Shishas, or hookahs, usually burn tobacco flavoured with fruit to offer a sweetened style. The smoke is inhaled in via a protracted rubber tube, passing via water to chill it down. “Shisha” can also be the time period typically used for the tobacco product.

A working group of the World Well being Group (WHO) warned in 2017 concerning the hazard of shisha smoking.

The apply is as much as 10 occasions extra dangerous than cigarettes however will not be focused by the identical consciousness campaigns as with tobacco, it mentioned.