Tobacco body brings in its own experts to challenge ban
The Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita) has attached two reports from medical professionals showing that banning the sale of tobacco products and cigarettes is unlikely to have any significant effects on the patterns of use and availability.
Fita went to the high court in Pretoria last month to ask it to set aside the regulations announced by co-operative governance & traditional affairs minister Nkosazana DlaminiZuma to ban the sale and purchase of cigarettes and tobacco products under levels 4 and 3 of the lockdown.
Dlamini-Zuma is defending the temporary ban and opposing the application.
In her reasons provided to court on May 27, Dlamini-Zuma said the temporary ban on the sale of tobacco products would mean a “sizeable number of South Africans” would quit smoking once lockdown came to an end.
She said a report by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) indicated that 88% of smokers were not able to buy cigarettes during level 5 lockdown, suggesting the temporary ban was effective in reducing access to and use of cigarettes.
Dlamini-Zuma said in her answering affidavit filed last week that prohibiting the sale of cigarettes had proven to be an effective measure to reduce the number of people who smoked, or the amount they smoked.
However, in its replying affidavit filed at the weekend, Fita said it had mandated Dr Michael West, a psychiatrist, to comment on Dlamini-Zuma’s affidavit.
“West’s findings are telling,” Fita chair Sinenhlanhla Mnguni
said in the affidavit.
“He states that simply banning the sale of tobacco is unlikely to have any significant effect on patterns of use and availability; and that there are no good evidentiary examples of such a policy decision leading to these outcomes.”
In his report, West said there was no evidence to suggest that short-term cessation of smoking would result in lower prevalence of smoking that would be sustained when the ban was lifted.
“There is no evidence to suggest the ban on tobacco sales has led to ‘freeing up’ capacity in hospital beds, nor is there evidence that the continued use of tobacco, in spite of lockdown regulations, has or will, directly lead/led to a catastrophic overburdening of the health-care system,” West said in his report.
Fita also presented a report from Dr Keith Scott, who said the HSRC report Dlamini-Zuma had relied on had failed to consider that many more fortunate smokers may have been able to store sufficient stocks of cigarettes to last them several weeks, while less fortunate people could not afford to do so.
In his report Scott said he was a medical doctor with more than 50 years of practice in primary health care.
Scott said research has conclusively shown that, owing to the highly addictive nature of tobacco, the short-term success rate of quitting smoking — unless accompanied by significant supporting interventions — was only 4%.
“Dr Scott concludes that whatever the number of people who are successfully able to quit as a result of the ban on the sale of tobacco products implemented during the lockdown, these people will not reap any benefit therefrom, specifically in relation to contracting Covid-19 in the short term, and the severity of the disease which may develop,” Mnguni said.
The matter is set to be heard this week.
On its social media account, Fita said: “The judges hearing the matter will use June 9 to consider the legal arguments advanced by the parties, and the matter will proceed to be heard on June 10.”