Big Tobacco’s profit addiction needs a quit plan:
Every year on 31 May, the World Health Organisation hosts World No Tobacco Day. The event shines a spotlight on the harmful effects of tobacco use and rallies global efforts to curb it. This year’s theme calls out the marketing tactics Big Tobacco uses to hook new users — especially young people.
Because tobacco kills up to half of all lifetime users, tobacco companies must relentlessly seek new customers to sustain their profits. For decades, the industry has targeted young people, knowing that early addiction fuels a lifetime of reliable revenues. Advertising has been the linchpin in enticing each new generation to sustain their deadly trade.
Leveraging loopholes to lure youth
Until the early 2000s, South African media was saturated with tobacco ads in magazines, on billboards and radio, and in cinemas. Many will recall Peter Stuyvesant’s iconic commercials, where vibrant young holidaymakers skied, snorkelled and gallivanted to a rousing soundtrack, capping their day by lighting a cigarette. The government banned these overt ads in 2001. But Big Tobacco didn’t quit — they adapted.
Today, the industry exploits loopholes in South Africa’s tobacco regulation by using retail points of sale as marketing hubs. Cigarette displays at shop counters dazzle with clever lighting and branded money mats designed to attract attention.
The tobacco industry claims these set-ups only serve to allow them to vie for market share among existing adult smokers but evidence shows these displays also lure young people. A synthesis of the research on the topic finds that teens frequently exposed to these displays are 1.6 times more likely to try smoking and 1.3 times more likely to consider it in the future.
The Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill, which is being debated in parliament, aims to ban point-of-sale advertising, closing this loophole in the regulatory framework. Global evidence shows that point-of-sale display bans reduce youth smoking experimentation, lower smoking rates among adolescents and diminish perceptions that tobacco is an “ordinary” commodity.
Predictably, Big Tobacco is opposed to the proposed ban, citing weak excuses that downplay health benefits and inflate retailer costs. In truth, they desperately seek to preserve this vital channel for luring young non-smokers. If point-of-sale displays are banned, it would be a significant setback to the industry.
Vaping’s surge among youth: Big tobacco’s unregulated playbook
As a global wave of tobacco-control legislation and excise-tax increases has stifled the industry’s ability to expand tobacco sales, companies have pivoted to novel products like e-cigarettes to secure their future revenues. Since 2010, giants like British American Tobacco, Philip Morris International, Japan Tobacco International and Imperial Brands have invested heavily in this industry, acquiring or launching brands like Vuse, JUUL and blu.
In South Africa, Vuse — made by British American Tobacco, producer of the nation’s top-selling Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes — stands out with pop-up stalls and concept stores in shopping malls across the country, signalling Big Tobacco’s bold entry into vaping.
E-cigarettes commonly deliver nicotine, a highly addictive and harmful substance, through flavoured e-liquids like Blue Raspberry and Mint Ice, packaged in sleek, vibrant designs. Sometimes, these products do not contain nicotine; but even these vapes carry health risks, as the chemicals used to create the tasty flavours cause damage to the lung lining and blood vessels.
In South Africa, e-cigarettes are currently unregulated, enabling Big Tobacco and independent vape companies to populate shopping malls with attractive kiosks and flood youth-heavy platforms like TikTok and Instagram with influencer-driven ads and sponsored content.
In the current regulatory vacuum, vape marketing has thrived unchecked, reaching one in five South Africans aged 16 and older, with exposure to e-cigarette marketing most prevalent among those aged 16 to 19 years (24.6%). Global research links such exposure to higher vaping initiation and use, with flavour-focused social media ads being a particular draw for teens.
The regulatory free-for-all in South Africa has fuelled alarming vaping trends among South African teens. A study of over 25 000 high school students found that 16.8% are current e-cigarette users, with 38% of these users vaping daily and over half using vapes four or more days a week.
Among those who use e-cigarettes, 88% puff on vapes that contain nicotine and 47% vape within an hour of waking — a clear marker of addiction. The study estimates 60% of teen vapers are addicted to their vapes, reflecting an extent of use and dependence on nicotine that researchers have never encountered with traditional cigarettes in the past.
The Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill aims to regulate e-cigarettes and other novel products like traditional tobacco by, among other things, banning direct advertising, including at the point of sale.
Big Tobacco and their front groups claim these products aid smoking cessation among adults wishing to quit tobacco and that advertising bans harm public health by limiting awareness of “safer” alternatives. Yet the World Health Organisation indicates that scant evidence supports these claims, while vibrant flavours, aggressive social media campaigns and alarming youth vaping trends expose Big Tobacco’s predatory focus on South Africa’s youth.
On World No Tobacco Day 2025, the urgent need to protect South Africa’s young people from exploitative marketing tactics takes centre stage. The Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill rises to this challenge, aiming to regulate vaping, and close loopholes that enable youth-targeted marketing of more traditional tobacco products.
The Bill is more than regulation: it demands that Big Tobacco and its affiliates end their predatory marketing aimed at young people and protects South Africa’s youth from deceptive tactics which drive lifelong addiction and health harms.
Sam Filby is a research officer at the Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (REEP) at the University of Cape Town and Corné van Walbeek is a professor in economics at UCT and the director of REEP.
DA renews bid to control policing in Western Cape:
The Democratic Alliance again called for the devolution of policing powers to the Western Cape, arguing that the centralised control of the South African Police Service (SAPS) has failed people plagued by violent crime, particularly on the Cape Flats.
This renewed push follows remarks made by billionaire businessman Johann Ruper during a meeting between a South African delegation led by President Cyril Ramaphosa and United States President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last week.
Rupert described the Cape Flats as the epicentre of South Africa’s violent crime problem and endorsed the idea of provinces taking greater control over policing functions. He also advocated for the use of advanced technologies such as Starlink — a satellite internet system developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX — to boost real-time communication, surveillance and modernise crime fighting in neglected areas.
The DA, which controls the Western Cape, has bristled at Rupert’s comments, which were meant to convey that crime affects all parts of South Africa, including what is arguably the best-run province in the country.
“He [Rupert] knows full well that the criminal justice system … is in the control of the national state,” said the party’s spokesperson on policing, Ian Cameron, who also chairs parliament’s portfolio committee on police.
Cameron called Rupert’s comments “misleading” and said it was “completely false” that the DA controlled the police in the Western Cape, calling for policing powers to be devolved to the province.
Barely two days after the Oval Office meeting, in which Trump accused South Africa of perpetrating a “white genocide”, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu released the country’s latest crime statistics, which showed that nearly 90% of the country’s gang murders occur in the Western Cape.
The DA’s renewed calls on policing powers follow years of advocacy for decentralised policing, which the party scaled up after the 2012 Khayelitsha commission of inquiry exposed systemic failures of the police service in high-crime areas such as that township.
Former police minister Bheki Cele publicly dismissed the proposal, asserting that it would require amendments to the Constitution, particularly to section 205, which establishes the SAPS as a national competency.
But the DA argues that such powers can be devolved without constitutional overhaul, pointing to section 206(4) of the Constitution, which allows provincial governments to “monitor police conduct” and “promote good relations between the police and the community”.
According to Western Cape Premier Alan Winde, the national government’s inability to invest in modern policing tools has left local officers under-equipped and overstretched.
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis wants the city’s metro police to be given powers to investigate crime, and has also requested that the metropolitan government be granted more authority to determine policing priorities.
Hill-Lewis told a recent media briefing that Rupert’s comments should not be dismissed but rather seen as a wake-up call. “The national government has failed in its duty to protect citizens. We need local control to try new solutions, and the Constitution already gives us a path,” he said.
Digital access has become a central plank in the DA’s policing reform agenda. The party believes Starlink could close the communication gap that hampers crime prevention efforts, especially in areas with little or no fibre connectivity.
But Starlink’s rollout in South Africa has faced regulatory hurdles. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa requires that foreign telecom operators hold at least 30% local ownership, a condition South African-born Musk has refused to comply with.
This week Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Solly Malatsi, a member of the DA, defended a controversial policy directive reviewing ownership requirements in the ICT sector, which critics allege is designed to pave the way for Starlink into South Africa.
Appearing before parliament’s portfolio committee on communication, Malatsi said his recently gazetted proposed ICT policy adjustments were intended to broadly attract investment into the sector.
But committee members from the ANC, Economic Freedom Fighters and uMkhonto weSizwe accused him of attempting to bypass legislative processes and undermine local companies by using a ministerial directive instead of amending legislation.
While proponents argue for the use of technology in policing, others have raised red flags about the risks of outsourcing national security infrastructure to a US-based company. Legal analysts argue that foreign satellite operators may not be bound by South Africa’s data protection laws, which could expose sensitive information to international surveillance.
In an interview with the Mail & Guardian last year, KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi expressed frustration with the centralised structure, saying provincial police leaders lack the authority to make operational decisions suited to local realities.
“We have budgets and responsibilities, but we don’t control staffing, deployments or logistics,” Mkhwanazi said, describing the system as “centralised in terms of constraint”. While he stopped short of advocating for devolution, his comments were interpreted by many as validation of the DA’s criticism of national policing.
Criminologist Guy Lamb described Mkhwanazi’s remarks as extraordinary. “SAPS is notoriously hierarchical. For a senior official to speak this frankly signals deep institutional frustration,” he said.
Former minister Cele repeatedly argued that decentralising the SAPS would require constitutional amendments and would fragment national coordination. “Security cannot be divided in a unitary state,” he said in parliament in 2021 — a position still echoed by many within the ruling party.
But political analysts such as Ongama Mtimka argue that there is room for deeper local collaboration within the existing framework. “The Constitution allows for local involvement in crime prevention. What’s missing is the political will to explore those avenues meaningfully.”
While the DA and its allies push for systemic reform, community organisations are urging politicians not to lose sight of the human cost. Residents of the Cape Flats, who face daily threats from gang violence, stress that real safety will require more than new technology or revised laws.
“We need trauma counselling, youth programmes, and jobs. Starlink won’t stop a bullet,” said Anthea Joseph, a youth mentor from Hanover Park. “Tech can help, but healing and opportunity must be part of the equation.”
Good party secretary general Brett Herron rebuked the DA’s stance on policing and crime, arguing that the party was “outrageously washing its hands of responsibility for transforming the culture of gangsterism in the Western Cape until it is given control of the police”.
“The party has been running the governments of Cape Town and the Western Cape for nearly two decades, more than long enough to implement its policies and programmes — but it takes no responsibility for gangsterism, which it blames solely on incompetent national policing.”
Herron argued that the DA leadership is “better suited to running neighbourhood security companies than developing policy to reduce crime”.
“Until the politicians in charge of the city and province, and many in the media, stop regarding the culture of gangsterism as ‘normal’ on the Cape Flats, Cape Town police stations will continue to record the highest numbers of murders in the country,” he said.
The journey to restore morality in South Africa:
What does a nation do when, in the Republic, the country’s political and social morality dissipates under the weight of corruption, violence, corruption, moral decay and declining social cohesion, among a myriad of societal evils.
Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, chair of the Moral Regeneration Movement (MRM), says this year’s dialogue focuses on the theme, Living Our Values: Faith, Leadership and the Moral Soul of the Nation.
Mkhatshwa says the dialogues, taking place in the Eastern Cape this week, aim to provoke thoughtful discussion and action against moral decay; violence, including gender-based violence; spiritual malaise; and the declining social cohesion.
It would be easy to throw in the towel and walk away from a sinking ship, yet Mkhatshwa, a man of deep faith, whose whole adult life as a Catholic priest and social and political activist, is not prepared for that.
He has seen it all; he has been in the ANC political trenches and the United Democratic Front when there was darkness of apartheid and injustice and oppression in the country.
He refuses to be despondent — to walk away from the project and throw up his hands in the air in despair. This, he says, is no option.
Instead, he has announced that the MRM and its sponsors, have launched a national campaign “not merely as a declaration, but in essence as a collective commitment by millions of public servants, in partnership with civil society, to defend our hard-won democracy and freedom against rampant threats fuelled by greed and impunity”.
He insists that something drastic ought to be done quickly to rescue the country from impending political, social and economic implosion, suggesting the campaign to reset and restore the work of MRM should be seen “as a campaign that belongs, and driven as a whole by the nation”.
Mkhatshwa says “it is no exaggeration to say our beautiful Republic is facing a crisis”, and is saying these things not as an alarmist, but as someone who loves his country, and seeking to find a solution to save it from turning into a political wasteland.
He suggests that the endemic corruption in the public service, the government, some religious organisations and businesses is a great cause for grave concern, arguing that the pathetic service delivery by all tiers of government is failing those who need it most. In the words of Cicero, there is a need for a shift of mindset — an imperative the country needs urgently.
Quoting Cicero, the ancient Roman lawyer, Mkhatshwa says: “Those tasked with public service must regard it as a privilege and an honour to serve the people”, adding that the public service is the engine room of society, and like the church, it touches the daily lives of millions of South Africans, especially the most vulnerable, which includes a horde of poor and unemployed black people.
“The breakdown of law and order in the country has become a nightmare, and people have lost faith in the government,” says Mkhatshwa, formerly a deputy basic education minister in the first democratic cabinet of former president Nelson Mandela of 1994, and later a Tshwane mayor.
He says that “thanks to the apartheid era” the African family structure was almost entirely destroyed and, in keeping with the apartheid ideology, “all hellbent to create enormous wealth for a few whites — and later during the democratic years, to be joined by wealthy blacks, the beneficiaries of a corrupted political system”.
The MRM this week travelled to the Eastern Cape, to address its constituency at the Buffalo City metropolitan municipality as a reminder of the need for a total spiritual metanoia needed to change society and leadership for the better.
In this Eastern Cape venture, his organisation collaborated with the Imvuselelo Foundation, a local entity, as part of the Eminent Persons Dialogue on morality and values to facilitate societal change. A series of conversations were held with public service entities throughout the country.
“We all need to roll up our sleeves, put a shoulder to the wheel to save our country from the scourge of moral decadence in society … We cannot live all of this in the hands of the government; we have to get our hands dirty to fix the mess in our society.
“The moral decadence we see today reminds us of Madiba’s passionate call for the RDP of the Soul. Fellow South Africans, I know we are weary — so punch-drunk that we risk giving up hope.
“Let us not succumb to that temptation,” he says, adding it would be better if all of society lifted itself by its own bootstraps to arrest the runaway train of corruption eating away at the moral fibre of society.
In its countrywide campaign to remind South Africans of Madiba’s call for moral regeneration, the MRM last week spread the good news of moral regeneration, hosted by the Free State government, in Mangaung.
Mkhatshwa says the MRM has chosen the theme, One Family, One Future, as a rallying cry “to underscore the centrality of the family as the nucleus, the heartbeat of society”, without which the project of countering societal disruption and political chaos of corruption brought about by moral decadence, would not be possible.
He says his movement is committed to tackling ethical malaise at its root, collaborating with its partners across the country, and also tackling the education sector.
“The South African black child is of great concern to us. The department of basic education and President Cyril Ramaphosa have publicly admitted that we are failing a black child.
“We neglected early childhood development, leaving grade 4 learners unable to read for meaning, with all its ugly consequences this brings for African society.”
The MRM has engaged the Department of Basic Education to integrate the Charter of Positive Values into the school curriculum immediately.
“Progress is under way, and we hope the current minister will join us in this critical effort,” says Mkhatshwa.
The historic charter, endorsed by Nelson Mandela in 2008 and embraced by the government in 2012, is supported across political, religious and civil society lines. It transcends ideology, culture and religious belief.
Says Mkhatshwa: “We hope to leave, wherever this campaign takes us, not just with resolutions, but a resolve to bring about change. Let us act not as separate factions, but as one family. Together we can rebuild trust, restore hope, and secure a future where no child is left behind.
“So, the task for the MRM and all its foot soldiers who are supporting its programmes in the country is gigantic, but so is our strength and resolve. The road is long, but our unity will light the way,” ended Mkhatshwa.
In the end, the dialogues seek to unpack the moral challenges facing the nation and to explore vital roles of faith-based and traditional leaders in addressing societal ills.
Jo-Mangaliso Mdhlela is an independent journalist, a former trade unionist, a social activist and an Anglican priest.
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