Structural Injustice and the Limits of Blame: Quantitative Evidence on Unrecorded Alcohol Consumption in Nairobi

Public responses to unrecorded (‘illicit’) alcohol in Kenya rest on a liability model of responsibility: producers and sellers are culpable, and consumers are agents who chose a prohibited and dangerous product. This article asks whether the moral presuppositions of that model survive contact with measured evidence. It draws on a survey of 118 current and former consumers in Embakasi East, Nairobi, and applies Iris Marion Young’s social connection model of responsibility. It argues that the evidence satisfies three observable conditions of structural injustice and defeats the empirical presuppositions of the liability model. Half of respondents earning below KES 10,000 a month reported the heaviest consumption band, against 5.9% of those earning KES 41,000–50,000. Respondents rated hedonic reasons for drinking at about 2.1 on a five-point scale, but family and environmental pressures at about 4.1. Supply was diffuse: 53% of home-brew sellers were described as operating independently. The article concludes that responsibility for the harms of unregulated alcohol is shared, forward-looking and differentiated by position, and it derives four constraints on ethically defensible regulation.