Foreign Nicotine Drug Dealers –
March 12, 2018 – “I do not know why I was not killed that day,” said Mr. Oluwafemi, who as deputy director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria has been one of his country’s leading antismoking activists … “He grabbed my hand and said ‘You must leave my country as soon as possible,’” said Dr. Bam, who is from Nepal. “Then he blew smoke in my face. My children started crying — and he left.” And just two years ago, he said, he received a Facebook message warning: “Do not interfere in our tobacco affairs.” It ended with “Your coming made the atmosphere not good.” When he looked up the sender’s name, Dr. Bam said, he found an official of the Indonesia Tobacco Growers Association. Mr. Oluwafemi said he could not prove that his attackers were linked to the tobacco industry in his country, but he strongly suspected it. They were far better dressed and better armed than typical robbers in Nigeria, he said, and his modest home was an unpromising target in a neighborhood of mansions with Mercedes-Benzes. Also, he added, they started firing even before they cleared the outside wall. He may have survived, he said, partly because of the chaos caused by all the shooting — the police later counted 75 empty shells.
