Backlash against new tobacco bill gets white hot

Smokers feel they have had it rough these last few years, what with the outright tobacco ban for five months during Covid and tighter restrictions on where and how you can smoke.

Older smokers recall with fondness the days you could smoke on aircraft, in pubs and restaurants, and at the office.

Those days are over, but the war on smokers continues, and a quarter of South Africans who smoke don’t like this one bit, as the comments on the Dear South Africa platform make clear.

In future, if the Department of Health (DoH) has its way, retailers will have to hide their cigarette displays from public eyes, cigarettes will come in plain packets, and online sales of tobacco and vaping products will be prohibited – as will smoking indoors and in public places.

If you’re caught smoking in the wrong place outdoors, a possible jail term of a least six months awaits you. Caught buying smokes online? A possible 15 years.

One wonders what punitive actions government will take in its next step in the war against smokers. Twenty years in jail, perhaps?

‘Schizophrenic’

The government is transparently schizophrenic when it comes to smokers. The DoH claims to be looking out for the health of all of us, while the South African Revenue Service (Sars) couldn’t give a damn as long as the excise duty is paid.

Read: Illicit trade is sucking R100bn a year out of SA

Parliament has called for comments on the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill, and is getting them by the spadeful.

The Global Adult Tobacco Survey undertaken by the South African Medical Research Council in 2021 shows 25.8% of South Africans were smokers, up from 16.2% in 2012.

Read: More South Africans are smoking

In other words, the war on tobacco, which is intended to improve public health by reducing the number of smokers, has had the opposite effect. Smoking in SA is booming, while elsewhere in the world it is declining.

Much of the reason for this must be placed at the feet of Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and People with Disabilities Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

During her tenure as minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, Dlamini-Zuma banned the sale of tobacco products altogether for five months during Covid.

Smokers were forced to get their fix on the black market, so they traded down and switched brands, a legacy that lives on, even today.

Tax revenues hit

The tobacco ban smashed the market share of big tobacco companies such as British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris, which between them produce brands like Marlboro, Peter Stuyvesant, Chesterfield and L&M.

SA’s biggest-selling brand today is RG, produced by Gold Leaf Tobacco. During Dlamini-Zuma’s tobacco ban in 2020, black market cigarettes poured across the border from Zimbabwe and Mozambique and were sold in spazas and grocery shops across the country.

Sars likely never got to see a cent from these sales.

Tax Justice SA (TJSA) reckons this illicit trade is costing Sars R20 billion a year, and the new tobacco control bill will hand over complete control of the cigarette market in SA to criminal tobacco barons.

“It’s as if the government has learned nothing from the disastrous and unconstitutional tobacco sales ban during the Covid lockdown,” says TJSA founder Yusuf Abramjee.

It‘s hard to imagine a more enduring and destructive policy, based on little more than a whim, in recent South African history.

“The market has still not recovered [from the Covid tobacco ban], and the illicit trade now accounts for up to 70% of cigarettes sold in South Africa,” says Johnny Moloto, GM at British American Tobacco South Africa (Batsa). “That means up to 70% of all tobacco products are already sold outside the scope of the government’s existing tobacco control measures.”

BAT has also hinted that should the bill be implemented as currently formulated, this may be the “final straw” for its operation in SA.

The war on smokers has now been extended to vapers.

For years, the DoH has harped on about the dangers of vaping as a kind of gateway to full-blown tobacco smoking.

The dangers of vaping have been deliberately inflated by the likes of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Gates Foundation and the World Health Organisation (WHO), all of which appear to have an outsized role in setting global policies on e-cigarettes, according to public health commentator Clive Bates.

The WHO says on its website there is evidence that e-cigarettes are “harmful to health and are not safe”.

Adding: “However, it is too early to provide a clear answer on the long-term impact of using them or being exposed to them.”

Bates contradicts this, pointing out that nicotine, though addictive, is not very harmful in itself. It’s the smoke and the associated toxic gases inhaled into the lungs that do the damage.

Vaping advocacy groups in SA point to some serious research, such as the Cochrane Review showing the effectiveness of vaping for those trying to quit smoking.

“An ordinary smoker without access to vaping publications would never know that vaping is a less harmful alternative to smoking,” says Asanda Gcoyi, CEO of the Vapour Products Association of South Africa.

“Once enacted, the bill will make it a certainty that only the determined smoker will ever know that they can reduce their harmful exposure to tobacco toxicants while getting the nicotine they are addicted to through vaping.”

Who writes these bills anyway?

The tobacco control bill reads more like a prohibitionist manifesto than a piece of legislation designed to bring positive health outcomes, says Kurt Yeo, a former smoker who switched to vaping and founded the advocacy group Vaping Saved My Life.

“Ultimately, it will create an environment where no legitimate business could operate, gift wrapping the [tobacco] sector for the black market, which will force consumers to engage in illegal activities, relinquishing all control, standards and protection.”

Read: Calls for reasonable taxation and law enforcement in tobacco industry

Yeo points out that vaping, while not entirely harmless, eliminates thousands of toxic chemicals found in tobacco smoke, which is the cause of almost all the deaths and diseases that occur due to smoking.

The DoH has framed vaping as a problem, particularly among the youth, and sees this as an outgrowth of the tobacco industry.

Hence governments in several countries are pushing for a ban on flavoured vapes, which the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids says contributes to youth addiction. The campaign receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies and was set up by billionaire and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Bates found it to be wrong in several of its public pronouncements. For example, the claim that teen smoking in the US was increasing (it’s declining) and that vaping causes IQ to drop.

“That’s wrong again,” writes Bates.

“No reputable scientist believes that the nicotine in e-cigarettes — or in cigarettes — causes a long-term decline in IQ.”

Tobacco and vaping advocacy groups point out that the tobacco control bill looks remarkably similar to laws enacted in other countries, even when the science does not support the legislative prescriptions sought. This suggests that supra-national and unaccountable public health bodies are running interference in SA lawmaking.

Swedish model

Sweden has effectively become smoke-free, with a 5% smokers prevalence rate, due largely to encouraging nicotine alternatives such as vaping and nicotine pouches.

Fifteen years ago, Sweden’s smoking rate was 150% higher than today. It now has the lowest percentage of tobacco-related diseases in the EU and a 41% lower incidence of cancer than other European countries.

Read: Sin tax on vaping products will trigger black market

There are reckoned to be about 900 000 vapers in SA, and they should be encouraged rather than punished, according to vaping advocacy groups.

“Governments across the world are always on alert for interference in policymaking by big tobacco companies. This alertness has now been extended to all nicotine products, save for nicotine replacement therapies. While this may be a prudent response, its outcomes are amusing in the case of vaping,” says Gcoyi.

To comment on the bill, click here.