New Smoking Laws In South Africa Will Boost Illicit Trade
Back in 2020 before the Covid lock downs British American Tobacco had nearly 50% market share of the total South African cigarette market. Today it has less than 10% with the rest being lost to black market illicit sales.
The one industry I know so much about is the cigarette industry having spent most of my career working for a Blue Chip tobacco company. In the past one of my roles was to locate and seize counterfeit cigarettes and this was a very interesting role that involved in most cases thinking out the box and out witting the criminals benefiting from the industry you were working for.
This week Parliament is trying to push through standard plain packaging for all cigarette brands which is simply going to create a far bigger problem. The idea that a cigarette box is advertising that particular brand is not going to change anything. Removing that branding however changes everything and it opens the floodgates for illicit brands from neighboring countries to flood the local market. The problem is you lose all the controls you would have had in place before.
It is obvious if you have a genuine item and a counterfeit item placed side by side you can spot the subtle differences immediately in the packaging. If you now have two plain packets next too each other it will be virtually impossible to spot immediately and forces you to check each and every coded stamp on the box. With a plain pack the code stamped will be harder to read because the white packaging does give it no real depth versus a color back ground.
Already the government has various bans on retail tobacco display units and any forms of point of sale advertising. The idea is to basically reduce the cigarette sales over time, but having an illicit trade that is booming offering cigarette sales that are not traceable that are much cheaper as they do not include the excise duties.
Illicit trade already makes up for 75% of the total cigarette trade in South Africa and moving to a standard plain packaging would see that number rise even more. If the cigarette trade is regulated properly like this is happening in 25 countries around the world then yes over time this will help reduce the number of youngsters starting to smoke. The problem with SA the opposite will happen as the regulators and police along with customs and excise are either useless, corrupt or generally have no idea what they are doing. I would say they are copying the other countries in what they are doing, but have no systems in place to stop the illicit trade and why this will never work.
Back in 2019/2020 when SA had the Covid lock downs the sale of cigarettes was banned. The result is the black market boomed and as expected the sales did not decrease and in an around about way the government fueled the illicit trade. One has to ask if this was done on purpose knowing this would happen and I would suggest this was. The health minister at the time who ordered the cigarette ban later had her sons caught dealing in the black market with alcohol and cigarettes. This entire ban was set up to help her kids prosper which was a proper mafia move.
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Tobaco high taxes usually trigger illicit sales. This happened in many countries where tabaco tax is as high as oil.
Yeah, bans don't really work other than to line the pockets of politicians that introduce them...
jeeez man. I remember the days when you could smoke in shopping centres, banks and there were even ashtrays outside cinemas.
I started working in a "cigar Bar" which was really a coffee shop and internet café by day and a cocktail bar by night. this was in The year 2000. I was only 15, but hey... whatever. This was the time of the introduction of the 1st real cigarettes' bans and restrictions. You could no longer smoke in public places, on planes and if you were lucky, your favourite bar or restaurant may have had a smoking area which was usually enclosed and separate from the rest of the establishment and they all smelt terrible. We managed to get away without changing our policy at all and smoking was allowed to continue without restrictions as we were licensed as a cigar bar.
I remember my very 1st flight overseas to see my mom in the UK. Although the plane still had ashtrays installed, there was no smoking allowed on the plane. At 16 I was already smoking well over a pack a day, having dropped out of school and working full time in hospitality. I took a cheaper flight the second time, a few years later and did a bit of a round trip with the plane stopping in Doha and then making it's way to the UK. It was almost a 24 hour travel. The crazy thing was you could smoke yourself stupid in Doha, which was equipped with smoking rooms that were so packed and full of smoke you didn't even have to light a cigarettes'. You just had to stand there for a minute and the secondary smoke would be the equivalent of about ten cigarettes. I could not, however, buy any alcohol (Obviously). When I got to London, their smoking policy was way ahead of ours and far more strict. You could drink yourself stupid, but not smoke. Sigh... There was no such thing as indoor smoking at all as smoking was completely banned from all public establishments. The price of cigarettes' in the UK was also ridiculous, but I learned my lesson from my first trip and packed two cartons of ciggies into my luggage while I was still in SA. S.M.A.R.T. Lol
The idea of removing branding is ridiculous. Each brand tastes completely different. I have been through phases of smoking camels, B&H special mild, Rothmans, Dunhill and Stuyvesant. Cigarettes were legal to purchase at 16 before the restrictions changed the legal age to 18, which is also the legal age for alcohol purchase and consumption.
Look, being a parent now, I appreciate the laws a bit more as they protect my kids, but its flipping annoying for adults. I barely smoke at all anymore anyway. I kicked the habit during lockdown when cigarettes' were banned completely during Covid.
I am now only a social smoker (which I never thought I would be) but I really do enjoy my ciggies with a glass or three of wine at social gatherings. I am also, still very fussy about what I smoke. Branding being vital. I believe you can't even buy menthol cigarettes in the UK anymore. I like Paul Mall purple, which is a berry and menthol mix. I don't want to smoke anything else.
Funny, I used to laugh at menthol smokers, but after I quit smoking while I was pregnant, I could not smoke anything else.
Looks like I'll have to be purchasing my favourite another way... just saying.
The aero plane flights were crazy in economy with heavy drinking and a cigarette smoke filled cabin. We had a cinema in Durban that had a bar and smoking area. I was a cigarette promoter so I used to do a majority of the ladies nights and was normally fully booked 6 months in advance. I have been involved in the launch of Chesterfield Lights in SA and Marlboro Lights over seas in the UK and a whole host of others that were shelved brands that required x amount of sales every 5 years to keep the branding name.
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What was the official reason for your administration to ban Tobacco sales during Covid?
In EU we have such measures in place for some time; all cigarettes and plain tobacco packaging are brown; With these images on them showing what this can do to different body parts. Tobacco sales isn't illegal though. Taxes are increased a lot in recent years, making smoking approximately 300% more expensive. Not sure if this reduces the amount of smokers. Recently I heard youngsters turning to smoking tobacco to try to quit vaping. In recent years, quite a few youngsters started vaping. This is the world upside down, in a way.