Cigarette sales ban based on ‘perverse justification’, court hears
Any benefit achieved by the continued ban on tobacco sales would be outweighed by far by the damage caused, British American Tobacco SA’s legal team argued in the Western Cape High Court on Wednesday.
BATSA – South Africa’s largest cigarette manufacturer, whose brands include Dunhill, Peter Stuyvesant and Lucky Strike – is challenging the ban. In a separate challenge, the Fair Trade Tobacco Association has approached the Supreme Court of Appeal for leave to appeal its case challenging the ban.
‘Perverse justification’
Advocate Alfred Cockrell SC argued on behalf of BATSA that the ban was aimed at reducing the occupation of intensive care unit (ICU) beds by smokers during the Covid-19 pandemic. The minister has indicated that the aim of the ban is to stop people from smoking so that they do not get Covid-19 in a more severe form, leading to having to occupy ICU beds when these are in great demand during the pandemic.
However, he argued, based on what Minister of Co-Operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma alleged in her court documents, just 10% – 15% of the country’s smokers will likely quit due to the ban because of the high price of illicit cigarettes.
Calling it a “perverse justification”, Cockrell said the minister had not at any point said what would be done to stop people from purchasing illicit cigarettes.
He further alleged that, based on figures given in the minister’s court documents, BATSA’s legal team made its own calculations and estimated that there would likely only be about 16.4 fewer ICU beds occupied at any given time due to the ban, compared to R38 million lost to the fiscus daily in excise duties. This was without counting job losses across the value chain, he added.
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