Cigarette company British American Tobacco SA (BATSA), farmers and tobacconists store JJ Cale say the new tobacco bill will further entrench the illegal industry, while making criminals of ordinary people.
The Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill, which is before the health committee in parliament, proposes draconian sentences such as five years in prison for smoking in a home where workers are present, or six months for vaping in a private car in the presence of a child.
It also enforces plain packaging of cigarettes, bans the display of cigarette boxes in retail stores and stops smoking in special ventilated rooms in restaurants and bars.
The bill treats vape products the same as cigarettes — adding stringent control to the largely unregulated vaping industry. Taxes on vaping liquid began in July.
The bill is open for public comment until August 4.
It aims to legislate both vaping and tobacco products, including cigars, snuff and cigarettes, in the same way, with BATSA MD Johnny Moloto saying the approach to different products should be risk related.
BATSA says regulation of tobacco is necessary, but regulations are not being enforced and new, stricter rules will not achieve a reduction in cigarette use.
“The market has still not recovered [from the Covid-19 five-month sales ban] and the illicit trade now accounts for up to 70% of cigarettes sold in SA,” Moloto said.
“It is beyond comprehension that the department of health wants to introduce measures like plain packaging and retail display bans that will simply incentivise remaining smokers of legal cigarettes to migrate to illicit products.”
Research conducted by Nicole Vellios of the UCT Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (Reep) found that illicit trade accounted for 5% of cigarettes between 2002 and 2009, but had risen to 30%-35% in 2017, and that now about 54% of all cigarettes are illegal.
Illegal cigarettes are much cheaper as they do not have excise tax added. A single cigarette on sale in the Cape Town CBD costs R1, which is equal to the amount of tax paid per cigarette by legal cigarettes.
BATSA has also called for a socioeconomic assessment of the bill and says it affects informal traders, who sell the bulk of SA’s cigarettes — as they need to display cigarettes. The bill criminalises the display of tobacco products with up to 10 years in jail.
According to BATSA, the bill fails to take into account SA conditions where most cigarettes are sold as singles in the informal environment — even though this is illegal. They argue that plain packaging will have no impact in reducing smoking when most people buy individual cigarettes.
Meanwhile, the Lesedi Traders Forum argues the bill will affect spaza shops and informal traders the most, but they do not have a fair opportunity to comment.
The forum says the bill has not been made available in any languages other than English. Many small business owners do not speak or read English at the same level as the technical English used in the draft legislation, it said.
Reep and Vellios’ research found plain packaging with graphic health warnings was off-putting to smokers, but BATSA says it will further entrench decisions to buy illegal packs that do not have pictures of diseased lungs.
It is the first time the multinational company has responded publicly to the bill, saying that consultation with the department of health in 2018 was about a different version than the one before parliament now.
François van der Merwe, on behalf of industry body Limpopo Tobacco Processors, which includes farmers, said previously 12.5-million tonnes of tobacco a year was produced but with the rise of the illegal industry this has fallen to 6-million tonnes a year. The industry and tobacco processing are fast becoming unsustainable, he said.
In 2019, there were 197 commercial tobacco farmers and 125 emerging black farmers. Today there are 155 farmers and only 10 black farmers, he said. “The legal industry has been devastated.”
He called for action against the illicit trade before the new legislation, which he said was only a step away from full prohibition.
Health bodies such as Cancer Association SA (Cansa) have welcome the proposed legislation as adult smoking continues to climb in SA.
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