Sometimes I think government legislates by using a random word generator designed to kick out the latest international trend, which is then slapped into law at the whim of someone in the administration. There are plenty of examples, but the latest one to pique my interest is the Control of Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill, otherwise known as the Tobacco Bill.
The bill has, like all good disasters, good intentions; to reduce smoking and dependence on addictive substances. But for the past few weeks I have been discussing various aspects of the tobacco industry with a huge variety of people for a cover story that appeared this week in the Financial Mail. The story is really about the subversion of the SA Revenue Services (Sars) as much as it is about the tobacco industry; so the focus is on direct cigarette tax, called excise duty.
In the process, I looked a bit more closely at the Tobacco Bill, which in the morass of SA politics I hadn’t really looked at very closely before. What I discovered is startling, although perhaps “discovered” is probably overstating the case since everything is out there for everyone to see.
The bill does five main things: first, it forces cigarette sellers to disguise the sales point. In other words, cigarette display boxes have to be removed from shelves, and if you want a pack, you have to specifically ask for it. Second, it forces tobacco companies to remove all branding from packets. This means packs will have the name of the brand on the outside in a defined font and colour, the smoking warning, and nothing else.
The legislation contains nothing on excise enforcement, even though Sars has been talking about track and trace systems for over more than a decade.
Third, it will remove indoor smoking areas in public places, so no more smoking rooms in restaurants and at airports. Fourth, you will no longer be able to smoke outdoors in certain designated areas, including close to the door of an office, because someone might catch a whiff of smoke and instantly keel over. You also won’t be able to smoke in your own home in front of guests or servants, and “smoking” is defined as holding a cigarette, not actually inhaling it.
These are all arguable issues; they have been tried outside SA in various places. They don’t really work — but whatever. It’s the fifth issue that really gets my goat. The legislation places the same restrictions on vaping that it does on smoking. This is so even though the legislation itself acknowledges that there is no evidence that vaping has any long-term health issues. The legislation says it’s doing so because vaping may encourage people to smoke. I just don’t understand this. In other words, the government has completely dispensed with any objective, scientific assessment as an underlying principle of legislation.
Imagine if that idea were applied to other areas and subjects?
Oh, hang on, it is applied to other areas and subjects. But in fact, the international evidence is precisely the opposite. Smokers are moving from cigarettes to vaping to help them give up smoking precisely because it’s less harmful. There is obviously some risk that it will encourage people to take up smoking, but because the whole point of vaping is that it removes the main carcinogens normal cigarettes contain, it seems logical that the legislation’s assumption that they are equally bad is just factually wrong.
There is one other scientific issue here. An academic from the University of Cape Town, Corne van Welbeek, has been following smoking legislation with enormous diligence for a long time and has done some very specific research on smoking incidence and tax rates and profitability that goes all the way back to 1961. His research and that of his colleagues has given rise to at least two interesting findings.
The first is that as excise tax on cigarettes started going up, smoking started to decline. From a public health point of view, making cigarettes more expensive worked. About a third of all smokers stopped, and only about 20% of the South African population now smokes regularly. I suspect this number is a bit low, but be that as it may, this is what the data shows.
The second finding is that around the time of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s smoking restrictions, including bans on public smoking and warnings on packets, smoking increased.
Yes, you read that correctly. The reason, surmises Van Welbeek, is that although the restrictions might have had some effect, they are not visible in the numbers because the main driver here is price, and this was the period of high economic growth in SA. In other words, because we were getting richer, the number of people who could afford to smoke, or smoke more, increased, outweighing the possible effect of the restrictions. What this shows is the randomness of the legislation. If reducing the number of smokers was really important to legislators, the scientific approach would be to enforce excise tax more rigorously and thereby make smoking more expensive. That’s what undoubtedly works.
But the legislation contains nothing on excise enforcement, even though Sars has been talking about track and trace systems for more than a decade. In fact, it introduces regulations that improve the position of the illicit industry, which will therefore undoubtedly increase smoking incidence. The only fair conclusion is that the government wants, through this legislation, to look as though it’s doing something when it is not actually doing anything. The question is, who benefits from all that? The obvious answer is the illicit trade, which is now about 40% of the total market.
I suspect the fact of the matter is that the new tobacco producers have got their hooks into some key politicians, and they are now dragging them around by the nose. I’m willing to bet we will hear more about this in future.
• Cohen is Business Day senior editor.
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