One morning many years ago, I decided to quit the bottle. I had been drinking the previous night, like—as my father used to say—a poverty-stricken person who stumbled upon alcohol and doesn’t know if they will ever get it again. 

In modern parlance, I had been drinking like a Kenyan geriatric millennial—yeah, Kenya’s geriatric millennials drink like it’s going out of fashion. 

That morning, I left the pub 25 kilometres away from my house, at around 4 am, and by 10 am, I had decided I would stop drinking. 

Not because I was arrested for reckless driving, or forced into a rehab facility, or denied access to alcohol. Nope. Without blaming my drinking habit on my ancestors, colonialists, or pre-Independence politicians, the way Kenya’s geriatric millennials do, I just decided to stop.

It was a personal decision. A very easy decision to make. 

That is why I was surprised when the Interior Cabinet Secretary released a policy document that seeks to force adults to quit drinking. 

Kenya’s National Policy for the Prevention, Management, and Control of Alcohol, Drugs, and Substance Abuse, released on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, has proposals that border on criminalisation of the distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages. 

Though the National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NACADA) stated after an online uproar that the document is filled with mere proposals that the Parliament will need to approve, we know how easily corruptible our spineless elected representatives are. 

They shamelessly kowtow to the Executive, and will easily pass these proposals for the president’s assent, after which the new laws will be treated like proposals because structures for their implementation will not be there, and the police will abuse them to extort Kenyans. 

To write that these proposals are draconian, yet child-like and not fit for a modern Kenya, is an understatement.

They are tailored to the whims of an individual, and the garrulous Interior Cabinet Secretary let the cat out of the bag by saying it is “not a mere policy document” and pointedly adding that President William Ruto is a teetotaler. 

The 75-page document, described as “a multi-sectoral approach to address the challenges posed by substance abuse in the country,” reads like a handbook for running a nanny State. 

They are not proposals meant “to prevent, mitigate, and control the devastating impact of alcohol abuse in our nation,” and “lay the foundation for a healthier, more prosperous nation,” as the Foreword by the Interior Cabinet Secretary proclaims. 

It is not a proactive policy. It is a retrogressive, reactive, multi-sectoral—whatever that means—document in which articles of the Constitution, sectoral policies, and chapters of Kenyan laws, UN conventions dating back to 1961, and international treaties are thrown around. 

It is sprinkled with random local and global statistics to give it a semblance of credibility, making it appear as though extensive research was conducted to compile it. 

Sample these: alcohol consumption is significantly high, with 14 per cent of Kenyans aged between 25 and 35 years drinking it. In secondary schools, alcohol use is at 3.8 per cent, and among primary school learners, alcohol use is at 2.6 per cent. 

Alcohol abuse among public sector employees stands at 23.8 per cent, with 13.2 per cent of employees suffering from Alcohol Use Disorders (AUDs). The severity of AUDs includes mild (5.7 per cent), moderate (3.0 per cent), and severe (4.5 per cent). 

The source of the statistics is NACADA, and some of the figures are from “research” it conducted as early as 2016.

For the sake of fairness, let’s say that NACADA and the entities that worked on the document mean well and that the statistics are genuine, but how will prohibiting the delivery of alcohol to private homes stop public sector employees from drinking?

How will moving the function of licensing of manufacture, exportation, and importation of alcoholic drinks to the National Government stop the consumption of alcohol by primary school learners and Kenyans aged between 25 and 35 years? 

How will banning the sale of alcohol in dining areas of members-only clubs help in stopping secondary school students from drinking? 

Some of the proposals are not only outrageous but outdated, proof that the people who came up with them were either drunk, or are out of touch, or simply ignorant.

This multi-sectoral policy wants to ban sales of alcohol through non-existent vending machines and also proposes that “the actual minimum size of alcohol packages be not less than 250 millilitres.” 

Smaller packages of alcohol were prohibited several years back, and even chang’aa, while sold in smaller quantities, is packaged in half- to twenty-litre plastic bottles and jerry cans—and this I know because I come from a constituency where the best chang’aa in eastern, if not the whole of Africa, is distilled. 

No need to even write about how the so-called proposals will kill legal businesses and render millions jobless, but denying adults access to alcohol will not stop them from drinking. 

People who value their tipple will go to the ends of the earth, almost literally, to get it, and there is very little the government can do to curtail their movement.

There is no denying that there is a need to curb alcohol-related accidents and deaths, and mitigate the impact of alcohol abuse, but this can only be achieved through a sober approach, and not force and knee-jerk reactions tailored to make one teetotaler happy. 

The writer is the Managing Editor of the Alliance for Science (AfS). These views are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the position of AfS or its partners