Bill
Ann Eveleth : IN THE ACT
Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma has the tobacco industry huffing and puffing over the Tobacco Products Control Amendment Bill, which aims to discourage young people from taking up smoking.
Anti-smokers and a curious array of pro- tobacco lobbyists – including the Congress of South African Trade Union’s affiliated Food and Allied Workers’ Union – faced off in a debate over the Bill during public hearings in Parliament this week. But the range of arguments – from health concerns to economic worries – did little to clear the air.
The Bill – which opponents claim is unconstitutional – provides local governments with the power to draft regulations banning smoking in most enclosed public places. It also imposes on local governments the duty to enforce any local or national ban. This clause aims to discourage smoking and to put the rights of non-smokers firmly above those of smokers.
The hospitality industry warned that the prospect of an effective non-smoking sign over much of the country would negatively affect the tourism industry and that small, medium and micro-enterprises would suffer most. But the real battle over the ban is only likely to emerge when local governments try clamp down on restaurants and bars which fail to enforce the ban on their patrons.
But the Bill goes further, and that’s where the real trouble begins. Zuma, a veteran of running battles with the powerful pharmaceutical industry, has taken on the equally powerful tobacco lobby with a proposed ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship of sporting and other events.
The main aim of this clause is to sever the “association of smoking with social success, business advancement and sporting prowess”, particularly in the minds of the youth.
Anti-smoking lobbyists from the health sector praised Zuma’s hard-nosed approach to tobacco advertising, which they say has increasingly targeted the youth.
But beneath the surface of this obvious public good, argue the Bill’s business and labour opponents, lies an economic disaster for an estimated 100 000 people employed by the tobacco industry. Sporting events that rely on tobacco sponsorship may not happen at all, and the spin-off benefits to young athletes will be lost. Newspapers and magazines that rely on tobacco advertising may be forced out of business, claims the Print Media Association.
Under pressure from a spate of class-action lawsuits in the industrialised world, the tobacco industry has not only found a new market in the developing world. It has also found a captive audience for its bottom- line economic demands in a country that is already shedding jobs.