The Tobacco Control Bill tabled in Parliament last week is only the first of two pieces of anti-smoking legislation, the Department of Health confirmed on Thursday.
A second Bill, which will introduce graphic health warnings on cigarette packets and pave the way for a ban on sales of fewer than 20 cigarettes at a time, was with the state law adviser waiting for certification, acting head of health promotion Kgwiti Mahlako said.
He hoped the second Bill would also be tabled this year, but was unsure when it would be processed.
”We are dependent on the parliamentary [health portfolio] committee’s programme, because they’ve got a number of things from the Department of Health,” he said. ”It’s among the priority Bills.”
Mahlako said the tabled Bill and the one with the advisers were two halves of a proposed amendment to the Tobacco Products Control Act that was published for public comment in October 2003.
The amendment had been split because the department had been advised that part of it — the section tabled last week — should be dealt with in terms of section 75 of the Constitution as a Bill that did not affect provinces.
That Bill seeks to close loopholes in the law by widening the definition of terms such as ”public place” and ”tobacco product”, and to regulate the chemicals added to tobacco products to disguise harsh tastes or make them more addictive.
It also proposes increases in penalties, and will raise the age limit for tobacco sales from 16 to 18 years and ban under-18s from designated smoking areas.
Mahlako said the second Bill had been tagged a section 76 Bill — defined as a bill ”affecting provinces”. Section 76 lists ”trade” as one of the areas of concurrent national and provincial competence.
Among the issues it would deal with was advertising, he said.
When the 2003 draft was published, the department said it would outlaw internet advertising and close other loopholes the industry had exploited to continue promoting tobacco, despite the general ban on tobacco advertising.
Mahlako said the Bill would also allow the minister of health to prescribe a minimum package size, which he said would be set at 20, to eliminate current sales of packets of as few as two cigarettes.
It would introduce graphic picture-based health warnings on packets, such as photographs of diseased lungs, and would also ban what the department says is misleading labelling of cigarettes as ”low tar” or ”light”.
Use of the terms was banned by a United States federal judge last month, but a group of tobacco companies, including British American Tobacco, the largest manufacturer in South Africa, have asked the judge to confirm that the ruling allows them to continue using the terms in marketing overseas.
Mahlako said though the Bills would be processed separately, they were both proposed amendments to the Tobacco Products Control Act, and would not result in separate pieces of legislation.
According to the department, tobacco is one of the leading preventable causes of death in the world, and kills 4,9-million people annually, the bulk of them in the developing world.
In South Africa cigarettes kill about 25 000 smokers a year. — Sapa