Experts slam government for not promoting a smoke-free SA

THE Africa Harm Reduction Alliance has described South African laws that govern cigarettes and nicotine as backward and unhelpful to those who want to quit smoking.

This week, the Health Department is expected to present the new tobacco control bill to the Parliamentary Health Committee. The Alliance described the bill as outdated, short sighted, and unscientific.

It said the department was expected to reveal some of the world’s harshest restrictions on alternative nicotine products when it briefed the health committee in Parliament.

The bill will prohibit vapes and pouches being sold as less risky alternatives, ban them from display, and introduce a wide range of new offences – including vaping in your own flat if your neighbour objects or in a car carrying a non-smoker – that will incur draconian punishments of up to five years in jail.

According to the Alliance, the government has ignored international evidence and is treating safer nicotine alternatives the same as traditional combustible cigarettes. The bill squanders the chance of a smoke-free future for the Alliance.

President, Kgosi Letlape, said: “If South Africa wants to reduce its shockingly high smoking rates, smokers need to be offered safer alternatives to the combustible cigarette, which is the most damaging way to get nicotine.”

He said it had been scientifically proven that modern non-combustible products such as vapes, oral nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco products were significantly less harmful than

cigarettes and were the most effective tool for helping smokers quit.

“But the new bill does not adequately distinguish between combustible and non-combustible tobacco and nicotine products. Applying anti-tobacco policies to smoke-free nicotine alternatives is dangerously inappropriate and short sighted,” he said.

Letlape said in South Africa, at least one in five adults smoked cigarettes.

“We should be following the science instead of blocking access to less harmful smoke-free alternatives for adult smokers who are simply trying to quit their cigarette habit,” he said.