Date set for new smoking laws in South Africa to make a comeback

The Department of Health says it will re-introduce the Control of Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill to Parliament on 4 September 2024.

Updating the Portfolio Committee on Health about the status of the Bill on Wednesday (28 August), the department said that it hopes to speedily process the new laws, taking off from where it left off in the sixth administration when the bill lapsed.

The starting point will be to complete the public participation process, it said, where it will move to complete public hearings in the outstanding two provinces.

It will then hold public hearings in Parliament and then start processing the public submissions it received on the bill.

The bill was first introduced in the National Assembly back in December 2022, and aims to “strengthen public health protection measures” in the country by aligning prevailing tobacco control legislation with World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control imperatives.

It is proposed legislation that will regulate the sale, advertising, and use of tobacco products and electronic delivery systems. 

Among other things, it seeks to:

• Impose stricter product and related product processing, manufacturing and import standards;
• Regulate tobacco product and electronic delivery system advertising;
• Standardise the ‘packaging and appearance’ of tobacco and electronic delivery system products;
• Prohibit smoking in all indoor public places as well as ‘certain outdoor areas’;
• Ban cigarette vending machines;
• Make ‘plain packaging with graphic health warnings and pictorials’ mandatory; and
• Ban the display of tobacco products and electronic delivery systems at points-of-sale.

Public consultations on the bill during the sixth administration managed to reach seven of the nine provinces in the country before lapsing.

During that process, committee media statements on the outcomes of several hearings tended to point to widespread in-principle support for the bill’s health-related objectives.

Supporters of the bill have largely grounded their arguments in health reasons, citing that available data of smoking-related illnesses as grounds for ‘needed’ legislative change to smoking laws.

Supporters have also called for all tobacco advertisements to feature the majority of related health risks, and agree with measures to limit access to younger South Africans—particularly with vaping.

However, at a more practical level, numerous pressing concerns have been raised, with detractors pointing to the new laws potentially exacerbating several key problems.

These include:

• Possible job losses in the industry should manufacturers downsize in the face of more onerous, costly regulatory requirements;
• The consequential likelihood of increased trade in illicit tobacco products;
• A possible reduction in tax revenue from the production and sale of legal tobacco products and electronic delivery systems;
• Inadequate attention to the Bill’s implications for small and informal traders (especially those selling single cigarettes);
• Inadequate attention to the Bill’s implications for tobacco farmers (especially small-scale and emerging farmers); and
• Inadequate monitoring and enforcement capacity.

Tobacco use in South Africa

According to the 2021 Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) South Africa report, daily smokers in South Africa smoke 8.5 cigarettes a day, while the prevalence of tobacco use among adults in the country is 29.4%, which equates to 12.7 million people.

21.2% of adults in South Africa smoke tobacco daily.

The Department of Health’s Deputy Director of General Primary Healthcare, Jeanette Hunter, said that there has been an increase in the use of hookah, e-cigarettes and vapes, particularly among young people.

The GATS report indicated that 2.2% of the South African adult population uses e-cigarettes, while the South African E-Cigarette Survey 2022 indicated that 11.3% of adults in urban South Africa have tried e-cigarettes and 4% are regular users.

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