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From March 25, 2020, when it was announced, to that glorious day five months later when smokers could finally head to the shop to stock up on ciggies, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma maintained that the ban on tobacco sales was necessary to decrease the risks of COVID-19 transmission.

Sharing entjies and pipes that would spread the virus was up there on her list of reasons, along with the idea that smokers were at greater risk of developing severe symptoms.

Whilst there are many aspects of the lockdown that stoked anger, the tobacco ban really struck a nerve with South Africans for several reasons.

Smokers wanted to smoke and were dropping irrational sums of money to stock up on the black market. Even non-smokers were angered by what looked like an overreach by our government, and some irrational reasoning when it was pressed on what led to the sales ban.

In a court case that continued long after the ban was lifted, British American Tobacco took on the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department. In December last year, the Western Cape High Court ruled that the “tobacco sales ban was not necessary or consistent with the South African Constitution”.

The black market thrived during the ban, resulting in a “highly developed illicit market in SA”, says UCT Professor Corné van Walbeek, citing it as one of the reasons that the tobacco sales ban was “doomed to failure” from the get-go.

Image: Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, ENCA

In a recent interview with TimesLIVE, Van Walbeek spoke about the findings from an online survey of more than 23 000 smokers carried out by the Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products at the University of Cape Town.

Those findings were published this week in the British Medical Journal publication, Tobacco Control.

The study showed that 93% of smokers maintained their habit, paying up to 250% more for their fix.

“The rationale at the outset I think was fair.”

“To think smokers have greater vulnerability actually makes sense. The virus attacks the lungs and smokers are more likely to be vulnerable.”

But, Van Walbeek says, if the ban had any hope of working, certain measures should have been in place.

“You have give or take 8 million cigarette smokers in SA,” said Van Walbeek, adding that even if most smokers wanted to quit, doing so without support is difficult.

Duncan Napier, who started the Facebook page ‘Fight For Your Rights SA‘, said that while he knows that smoking is unhealthy, rather than helping people to quit, the ban had the opposite effect.

“It pulled the rug out from under people’s feet,” he said. “It makes you want to rebel against what [government] is trying to achieve.”

The ban was especially detrimental to people with low incomes who were dropping upwards of R150 on a pack of smokes.

Van Walbeek said the government would have done better to raise the excise tax on cigarettes.

“We know people respond to changes in price, especially if this was a permanent change,” he said.

“It was always clear the ban would be lifted. So there was not that urgency for people to quit because they would never be able to find a cigarette again.”

For now, it looks like our tobacco is here to stay.

[source:timeslive]