Customs officers of the South African Revenue Service (Sars) have announced that they have seized illegal cigarettes around Gauteng which amount to R2.4 million. In a statement Sars said 22 shops were raided in Kempton Park, Pretoria and Johannesburg. This was a joint operation between Sars Customs, the SAPS, the Department of Home Affairs and...
NHF, WHO tackle government over sales The ministries of Health as well as Finance, Budget and National Planning are working together to upwardly review taxes on tobacco in a bid to make the product unaffordable. This comes as the Federal government has warned the tobacco industry against the introduction of electronic smoking devices, which are falsely...
*As 16,000 die of tobacco-related diseases in Nigeria annually Abia State Government has come under intense pressure to domesticate the National Tobacco Control Act passed into law since 2015. A civil society group, Civil Society Legislative Advocay Centre, CISLAC, which is at the vanguard of the advocacy, visited the state where it had audience with top...
While cigarettes constitute a source of considerable revenue for the Indian government, it is also crucial to reduce the consumption of these “sin goods” preferably through increased taxation. On similar lines, the finance minister of India, while presenting the 2020-2021 budget, suggested an upsurge in the excise duty charged on cigarettes by raising the...
The department of health is pushing forward on a draft bill in an effort to get more stringent anti-smoking laws passed. The department’s Lynn Moeng told EWN that the Control of Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Bill is currently in the pipeline, and that government is working as ‘fast as it can’ to have...
Farmers have welcomed the Tobacco Transformation Plan, which is aimed at boosting production through local funding. Government instituted a tobacco value addition and transformation roadmap under the National Value Chain Tobacco Transformation Plan last week, which is aimed at localising tobacco financing and transforming the industry into a US$5 billion industry by 2025. The plan is...
Scientific papers suggesting that smokers are less likely to fall ill with covid-19 are being discredited as links to the tobacco industry are revealed, report Stéphane Horel and Ties Keyzer In the early days of the pandemic, media outlets around the world reported that smokers seemed to be under-represented among patients seriously ill with covid-19...
The EU is preparing a due diligence law by June 2021 to hold companies accountable for their impact on people and the planet. There is an urgent need to address the human rights violations, child labour, environmental impact, and disinformation of the tobacco industry, write Helen Stjerna, Farida Akhter, and Sonja von Eichborn. Helen Stjerna...
In Summary Nicotine is a highly addictive drug that obstructs the developing brain and many teenagers are unable to quit, the World Health Organisation says. The Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance says because there is no age-verification system to curb illegal sale to minors, taxes are a welcome step. The government seeks to stop a growing...
Making it illegal for more young people to buy cigarettes would help meet the government’s target of ending smoking by 2030, MPs say MPs have called for a consultation on raising the age for the sale of cigarettes to 21 from 18 in order to end the “tobacco epidemic” by 2030. The all-party parliamentary group on...
