FDA is collapsing local breweries and impoverishing celebrities – Musician Pablo Hxncho
Ghanaian Afro-Dancehall musician, Lawrence Nii Adjei Laryea, popularly known as Pablo Hxncho has expressed his disappointment in the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) for banning celebrities from advertising alcoholic products.
In a post on his Facebook wall he wrote, “Alcohol is synonymous with celebrities therefore everywhere in the world these celebrities are used in advertising these products.
Brewery companies are supposed to maximize profit and pay taxes and one of their ingredients to make this possible is by advertising and they need popular faces to advertise their products just like any other business so they can sell and pay their taxes.”
He continued that, “Across the world breweries actually partner with huge celebrities to promote their products and a typical example is the relationship between Heineken Beer and the James Bond Characters.
In fact, great rappers like Rick Ross and the rest do not only advertise alcoholic products but do own alcoholic companies.”
The rest of the post is as follows:
For some strange reason, in a country called Ghana where leaders are bullies, the FDA for the past 6 years has banned breweries from using celebrities to promote their products and you ask yourself how do they expect them to pay more taxes if they’re being denied profit?
If alcohol is not a banned substance, how do you stop alcoholic companies from advertising their products?
If there is a regulation that allows alcohol to be advertised after 8pm when it’s expected that Kids are asleep then why deny some Ghanaians, the right to advertise in the name of being too successful and popular?
Interestingly, breweries and alcoholic companies in … developed countries are using even our celebrities to advertise their products which are being shown in our country and our FDA has no power to ban these companies. So, what is the sense in banning the local breweries while these foreign breweries advertise in this same Country called Ghana? And a typical example is Hennessy for Cyfer Africa and Guinness & Heineken on DSTV during EPL in the day on our screens and FDA is a toothless bulldog when it comes to that since their powers is useless in that hemisphere.
What the FDA is basically doing is to impoverish local companies while enriching foreign companies and it shows how wicked our authorities are to Ghanaians.
Fact is, if I don’t drink alcohol no amount of advertising will make me drink alcohol but if I love alcohol, I’ll look for it even without seeing an advert in fact Akpetesi is the highest selling alcoholic beverage, but no one has even seen an akpeteshi advert so FDA should stop bullying these breweries.
These adverts are basically to create competition for customers among the breweries and not necessarily to lure non alcoholics into drinking, so these bans are just meaningless.
These unnecessary bans have affected our creative industry big time because these companies are major sources of our income and therefore our celebrities can’t even compete with our neighbors who are getting all the support from their local breweries.
Indeed, most of our events which were being sponsored by our breweries have collapsed all in the name of these unproductive bans by the FDA.
Instead of FDA making sure these Kids are not allowed access to alcohol by ensuring that bars have age limit like how it’s done in other countries they’re rather denying breweries their right to advertise by introducing unnecessary regulations to impoverish them.
FDA never produced any data to show us the reason for banning adverts by celebrities and they have shown no empirical evidence after the ban therefore all one can see is just leaders who have turned themselves into bullies just because they have the authority.
They drink alcohol in their closet and ban it in the open just to show a good face….
Story by Vanessa Eshun
