Thank you, Chairperson of the day. Chairperson, colleagues and special delegates present, it is my pleasure to thank you and welcome you to this House today. The DA will, in the main, support the Bill, but there are issues that we need to deal with so that they can be straightened out.
Section 24 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996, states that, and I quote:
Everyone has the right-
(a) to an environment that is not harmful to their health or wellbeing; and
(b) to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations ...
The DA subscribes to these rights as they are provisions of the supreme law of the country and not of a political party. Let me hasten to say we are on the last mile of our walk for 2008, awaiting the prospects of the new year, that is 2009, with eagerness.
Ka Sepedi bare "ngwaga o sa nthatego, tshelaganya ke tle ke je." [When a person is experiencing problems, he wishes they would pass quickly so that he can be happy again like others.]
We are really hoping for the best in the year to come.
This Bill seeks to amend the definitions of advertisements on packaging, and also prohibits the sale of tobacco products to and by persons under the age of 18 years. I am not sure how this can be implemented since the purchaser is not always the user. As much as we say we should not sell to those who are under 18 years, the purchaser is not always the person who is going to use it.
Street vendors sell to everybody and there is a need to educate the sellers to ensure that they do not engage with the underaged. So we need to deal with that element and say how then do we deal with and monitor these aspects that would be a challenge to us because these tobacco products are also sold to everybody by street vendors.
Make the standards that apply to manufacturers of tobacco products applicable to importers of tobacco products. It is very important that those who import inferior tobacco products illegally are dealt with to protect legal manufacturers and sellers.
The government gains tremendously from taxes - and uses it to provide services to our communities - paid by the tobacco companies that actually do business in a good way. So we need to ask how then are those that actually bring in this product illegally going to be dealt with?
Smokeless tobacco products are generally harmful to the health of those who use them. Smoke-generating tobacco products such as cigarettes are harmful to both users and nonusers. These harms are well documented in the health research documents, hospitals and clinic records. The short and the long of it is that one's life is shortened when using tobacco products.
Life is about choices that individuals make. Individuals choose to use alcohol and its products in different ways. It is outlawed to drink, get drunk and drive, but there are those who choose to put the lives of others at risk by insisting on driving when they are drunk. They put innocent lives at risk by causing road accidents. Some pedestrians get knocked down by vehicles because of wandering onto the roads when drunk.
Some individuals also choose to use tobacco products, and the most common one in South Africa is the smoke-generating cigarette. Users and nonusers are affected the same way if users do not ensure that they smoke in designated places. By the way, South Africa seems to be the first country in Africa to have a regulation allowing smokers to use designated places, and no smoking in public places. The world is copying South Africa in their endeavour to regulate the industry.
Display of tobacco products at retail outlets is regulated. Self-service displays allowing customers to handle tobacco products before paying for them is prohibited because these are said to be easy vehicles used to promote tobacco companies and the products that they are selling. Sales through the Internet, post and other electronic media are also prohibited. We welcome that, but the big question is how do we monitor those particular aspects? I think in the regulations, perhaps, we need to look at these particular elements. But how we do this is then the question that we have to answer.
Our country has many street vendors selling all forms of products to survive due to the lack of better employment opportunities as our economy is growing but is not translating the growth into more job opportunities for the unemployed.
By the way, these big outlets are normally regulated, or will there be special regulations allowing them to sell as they have been doing? What are we doing to help these vendors comply with the law without making them suffer because they sell on the streets, so they can survive because they are unemployed?
As we make laws, let's deal with those unintended consequences that may arise, excepting those that are not clear as this is promulgated into law. But where those unintended consequences are very clear, let's find mechanisms to deal with them so that the unemployed that survive in this way do not get hurt.
I come from Limpopo, Polokwane in particular. Some 200 km north, there's a port of entry called Beit Bridge, just outside the town of Musina. The storages or house halls are full of "fong-kong" cigarettes confiscated coming from outside the country illegally. How many more of such illegal cigarettes enter the country without being noticed? How is this affecting the formal industry that pays taxes to our government?
We believe there's a need to consider not prohibiting one-on-one communication. As the law stands now, that has been prohibited but we believe it can be avoided. This port of entry that is in Polokwane reminds me of many things that are coming out of Polokwane - the stories are there.