The saying ‘individuals are sovereign in matters that concern their private lives’ has already attained the status of absolute truth across the globe. Being cognisant of this paradigm shift, in a clear break with the past, the Ethiopian Constitution has created wide room that confers the right and triumph of individual freedom ranging from rudimentary rights such as speech to the realm of economics. It is as a result of this constitutional guarantee that any effort towards banning chat is halted with a red light.

But is banning chat an encroachment to the rights and liberties of individuals? Should the state remain cross-legged while the nation as a whole is drifting into a lethargic state with the danger of being the victim of the so-called slacker’s philosophy?

Prohibiting chewing chat legally is neither against the Constitution nor against the accepted norms of individual freedom. By any standard, Ethiopia is poor and must stop turning a blind eye to a drug problem. In a country where millions have died of starvation, chat has stood tall as a means of ignoring the situation as it injects people with the power of tolerance of shame.

If the twilight for an economic renaissance is not to fall victim to an evaporation of enthusiasm, both legal and political therapy are highly demanded. With all the strength that determination to get the nation out of the deep quagmire of poverty gives, the government should painstakingly expand its legislative reaches to areas that are untouchable by the understanding of traditional jurisprudence. Thanks to the hard won economic growth that is underway, the prosperity of the nation has proven attainable in the near future. The country by its growth chemistry has transferred itself from the situation where no light is seen at the end of the tunnel to promising and vivid economic progress. Therefore, the central question at stake is not if anything should be done about the problem but rather where to find the proper theoretical and practical backing for the conclusion of regulation in the chat market.

By the magic of paternalistic law, the state is sometimes better placed than individuals to make choices that concern them. That is the logic behind the American criminal law that prohibits suicide. It is common in the legislative history of the state and supported by any logic of the day for the state to prohibit an individual from doing something that ultimately hurts himself even in countries where right is the rule the day.

The crux of the matter should not be whether it is against the right of individuals or not. Rather, the real parameter should be whether the individual ultimately benefits from the prohibition or not. Therefore, the government can prohibit an individual from chewing chat as long as the act “ultimately benefits the individual”.

The other legal theory that legitimates the prohibition of chewing is the dictates of outsider jurisprudence. According to this theory a conservative constitutional diehard romance with a constitution is ridiculed. Though the constitution is generally meant to be observed inside and out, for the good of the public there are rights that are sacrificed, especially in a country where group rights are highly valued.

If denying an individual the act of chewing chat benefits the individual cum the public in as much as he is elevated to contribute his share to the betterment of society in particular and the nation in general, it is worth doing. A kind of conservative blind obedience to the constitution while a danger exists that has the potential to create economic paralysis is nothing but a whole-hearted acceptance of a systemic failure.

The other palatable concept that fuels this call for legislative activism with a force of reason to the state’s potential act of prohibiting chewing chat is the Lee Thesis. This theory, which is an outgrowth of the developmental state model in economics, measures actions by their end results.

As a state determined to defeat poverty, the Lee Thesis advocates that though certain rights are watered down, as long as long as an action has a positive gain, it is just. It justifies the state’s act of transgressing some minor right from observing its duty of developing the economy of the nation. Therefore, as long as chat is destined to have a negative effect on the economic growth of the nation as its ceremony consumes multiple hours, legal action is fully justified.

Chewing chat is more of a social anthropological issue than a legal issue. It is an anthropological issue for the culture of chewing has its own organisational politics and economics. By way of price discrimination that mekamiya bets (chat houses) put into use, it has cemented stratified economic classes.

As is the case with air travel where there exists an economic and first class division, the same holds true with mekamiya bets. People with good purchasing power enjoy furnished, well-situated and first class hospitality.

The plant itself is not homogenous and is subject to class divisions. A bundle of chat’s price differs immensely based on its mind-altering properties (merkana).

Chat parse has its own constellation of organisational politics. It is essentially a confluence point for people with quasi-similar political thinking and inclination. While the poor in the streets of Addis talk about the vagrancy law; the rich and the academic elite have as their headline the nation’s pressing political and economic issues. As controversial as it may be, chat houses are developing to be the most determinant factors in election campaign success.

Therefore, an effective strategy of mitigating, if not eradicating, the tradition of chewing chat demands the conjugation of these two instruments (law and anthropology) in parallel terms towards one common end - a chat free Ethiopia. While the state should issue laws that prohibit chewing chat, it should also instruct its social anthropologists to discover the social urge behind chewing chat.

With the tools of the advanced research methodology of social anthropologists, the stinging interest in the shadow behind the nascent tradition of chat can be kindled and so that the research comes to teach the society to refrain from chewing. These two approaches will create an effective synergy to combat a rampant problem.

Anachronistic of the nation’s policymaking history, via marrying the dynamics of these two sciences, law as an instrument of social change will bring means to engineer society to a new mode of thinking divorced with its past history of mere theoretical preoccupation. But the success of such policy demands ending of the civic neglect that the initiative rests on collective shoulders.

This mindset shift will go far towards hitting the roots of poverty. In return, the nation may hold its head up proudly in the knowledge that it has done well for its citizens.