The tobacco industry is ”on top of things” when it comes to the government’s proposed tougher anti-smoking legislation, according to the Democratic Alliance’s former health spokesperson, Dianne Kohler-Barnard.
She also said she will ”fight to the death” for smokers’ rights, and claimed that Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is targeting smokers in a bid to draw attention away from Aids.
Kohler-Barnard made these statements last month, when she was the party’s health spokesperson, in a series of e-mails she sent to an anti-tobacco activist in the apparent belief that he was a smoker concerned about the proposed changes to the law.
She has since changed portfolios, and is now DA spokesperson on safety and security.
”I’ve always fought for the rights of smokers — simply because it’s legal to buy, sell and smoke in this country and because the minister of health is targeting them to draw our eyes away from the 1 000 deaths a day from Aids,” she said in one e-mail.
”[I have] never touched a cigarette — but I’ll fight to the death [for] your right to do so!” she said in another.
”The tobacco industry is on top of things — I talk to them regularly … Smokers have rights — and they have the right not to be sent out the building like some lower species.”
Kohler-Barnard also said she pushed management of the South African Broadcasting Corporation in KwaZulu-Natal, where she worked before going into politics, to establish a dedicated smoking room.
The activist, Mossel Bay resident and emphysema sufferer Ken Sheppard, had sent her an e-mail asking if he could tell her his concerns about the legislation, after reading a newspaper article in which she was quoted on the issue.
Sheppard said this week that he was astonished at Kohler-Barnard’s response.
”She doesn’t sound like a person who is concerned about health, or about the rights she should be thinking about: the rights to clean air and good health,” he said.
”Asbestos is also a legal product, but people don’t have a right to spray asbestos fibres all over the place. Second-hand smoke contains cyanide, chlorine, arsenic and about 4 000 other chemicals, yet non-smokers are routinely forced to breathe these toxins.”
He said it was ”nonsense” to claim that the minister was trying to draw attention away from the Aids.
”She has been virtually silent on the tobacco pandemic since 2000, and the amendment Bill has been sitting unattended in Parliament for almost that long,” he said.
The Bill, which was expected to go before the health portfolio committee this year, but now appears unlikely to do so, proposes a dramatic increase in fines for tobacco-related offences, tougher restrictions on advertising and display, graphic health warnings on cigarette packets, and an increase in the minimum age for cigarette sales from 16 to 18.
Kohler-Barnard declined to discuss the e-mails or her views on the tobacco legislation with the South African Press Association, saying it was an issue for her successor in the health slot, Gareth Morgan.
”My view is, it’s not relevant any more. You have to get it from Gareth,” she said.
Morgan said that when Kohler-Barnard handed over the portfolio, she briefed him on other health-related legislation in the pipeline, but not on the tobacco Bill.
He said the DA did not as yet have a position on the Bill, and he himself was unfamiliar with it.
When the measure is due to come up in the health portfolio committee, it will be discussed in caucus, and he will be given a mandate.
”Absolutely none of that has happened,” he said.
He doubted whether the Bill would in fact come before the committee this year.
Morgan also said he had not been approached by the tobacco industry on the Bill. — Sapa