A leftover bill from the previous administration that seeks to tighten regulations on tobacco and vaping products is back before parliament’s health committee. But the business community believes it needs to be properly consulted on its impact.
Minister of health Aaron Motsoaledi is set to reintroduce the Tobacco Control & Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill to the portfolio committee on health on Wednesday as the government presses on with its efforts to align South Africa’s smoking restrictions with World Health Organisation (WHO) standards.
The portfolio committee chair Sibongiseni Dhlomo told Business Times the committee expected the minister to provide it with a briefing on the bill on Wednesday. “The minister has had an interest in having the bill continuing. It lapsed before the end of the previous administration. The bill has been brought back to parliament. We will not ignore what has happened to [it] up to now,” he said.
The proposed legislation seeks to reduce the harm caused by tobacco smoking and to protect the rights of non-smokers by implementing measures to reduce tobacco use and nicotine dependence.
Its drafters envisage a law that will create smoke-free status for indoor areas and for some outdoor areas such as public spaces, workplaces and public transport.
They also want standardised packaging and labelling, and graphic health warnings for tobacco products and electronic delivery systems (e-cigarettes and vapes). The bill seeks to completely prohibit the advertising of tobacco products, e-cigarettes and vapes; and the removal of vending machines selling tobacco products.
However, its critics have slammed provisions in the bill as draconian and want it revised or withdrawn entirely.
Do not forget about smokers. The bill is almost entirely focused on preventing smoking initiation and makes no effort to help the almost 13-million smokers quit smoking
— Asanda Gcoyi, CEO of Vapour Products Association of SA
Dhlomo said the committee would allow institutions that had already made formal requests to make submissions to do so, but said it was unlikely to have time to start the legislative process from scratch. “If we do have public hearings again, it will have to go with a budget. Who is going to pay for that? There is work to be done and the committee has other work on its agenda. Work was done and there is a legacy report that will attest to that. Public hearings are costly.”
He said while it was too early to tell when the committee would be done with the bill, it wanted to start the remaining public hearings in October or November and hopefully conclude the process by the end of the year.
Vapour Products Association of South Africa (Vpasa) CEO Asanda Gcoyi said the group was disappointed that parliament was picking up where the previous administration had left off. “We had hoped the new committee would review the entire basis of the bill, open space for the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) to review the bill, and the extent to which the public hearings by the previous committee met the requirements for earnest public participation.”
Gcoyi expects the committee to be furnished with a report on how far the processing of the bill went in the previous term. All provinces except KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape have had public hearings. “We certainly view the public hearings as a lost opportunity for parliament to listen to communities, given the glaring shortfalls that were apparent in all seven provinces.”
Gcoyi urged the government to “not cherry-pick” the WHO’s framework convention on tobacco control, adding that the government must assess the best means for incorporating harm reduction into South Africa’s regulatory framework. “ The bill is almost entirely focused on preventing smoking initiation and makes no effort to help the almost 13-million smokers quit smoking.”
Gcoyi said South Africa should learn from the UK, which has launched programmes to encourage smokers to swap smoking for vaping, to assist smokers in quitting.
Research Officer in the Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (Reep) Samantha Filby said that while the bill was long overdue.
"South Africa’s stasis in the area of tobacco-control policy bears out in the most recent tobacco use prevalence figures, which, when compared with the results of earlier surveys, indicate that tobacco use in SA is on the rise."
A 2022 Global Adults Tobacco Survey by the department of health, found that products, including e-cigarettes and hookahs, are largely unregulated and target mostly younger age groups. “The highest percentage of usage of e-cigarettes was in the age 15-24 category, creating a new generation dangerously addicted to nicotine,” the survey found.
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