MARTIN VAN STADEN: It’s time to talk about UN meddling in SA

The busybodies at the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) held their World Health Assembly in Geneva from May 19-27. The outcome? Expect further restrictions on, and interference in, the daily lives of South Africans. 

In his opening address at the assembly, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus celebrated the fact that more governments were adopting policies that restrict consumer freedom, shockingly praising the one-party state of Vietnam specifically for banning e-cigarettes. He also celebrated that the WHO has helped 15 nations increase “sin” taxes last year — during a global inflation crisis. 

Our own GNU government is an eager trooper for the WHO, and other foreign know-betters who are talking to Nedlac. So eager, in fact, that health minister Aaron Motsoaledi regards the WHO’s guidance as more important than the SA constitution and its guarantees for civil liberty and considered public policymaking. 

SA has thundered ahead with WHO directives on sugar taxes and alcohol regulation, but the crusade against smoking stands out in particular. The Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill has been in the pipeline since 2018, with the government showing no signs of abandoning its misguided attack on consumer choice and harm reduction.

It would have been one — no less unjustifiable — thing if the Tobacco Bill restricted only tobacco, but that it sweeps e-cigarettes and vapes up in the same one-size-fits-all mould is dumbfounding. Why are the same politicians and commentators who shout loudest for us to stand up to Donald Trump more than willing to roll over in the face of the UN? 

This World Health Assembly comes hot on the heels of the UN General Assembly’s “zero draft” on non-communicable diseases, which will be considered by a high-level panel in September. This draft contains a whole section dedicated to tobacco control, and one can see the patent copying and pasting between it and the Tobacco Bill all too clearly. 

The draft — and the SA posture — is almost entirely dedicated to control, taxation and restriction rather than harm reduction, education and human dignity. Where education is dismissively treated, it is conceptualised as lecturing and patronising the public. 

The draft celebrates that “at least 80% of countries have implemented or increased excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverages to levels recommended by the [WHO] by 2030.” Note the hubris of strong-arming, through soft power, developing countries to increase the tax burden on their generally struggling populations.

Our own Tobacco Bill exemplifies this paternalistic over-reach, mirroring the WHO’s agenda to curtail personal freedom under the guise of public health. This approach ignores SA’s unique socioeconomic challenges, where high taxes and restrictive policies drive consumers to illicit markets.

The illicit tobacco market today represents the biggest portion (about 60%) of the whole tobacco industry, which necessarily undermines public health, economic stability and the rule of law. The president noted this problem in his state of the nation address, yet his own ministers pursue policies that enrich that gangs that flood illegal cigarettes across our borders. 

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, various congress of the parties (COP) recommendations and the zero draft, all of which SA enthusiastically adopts in the Tobacco Bill, push a blanket strategy that fails to account for the reality on the ground here. 

For instance, the bill’s restrictions on e-cigarettes disregard their proven role in harm reduction, with studies showing they are up to 95% less harmful than traditional cigarettes. The bill also bizarrely proposes to criminalise smoking or vaping in your own home. This is something no self-respecting South African ever voted to countenance, nor will they tolerate such an invasion of their privacy. 

By lumping vapes with tobacco government aligns with the WHO’s misguided dogma, stifling innovation and consumer choice. This paternalism ignores the fact that South Africans can make informed decisions, without the state dictating behaviour through heavy-handed regulation. 

Instead of empowering individuals with education on safer alternatives, the Tobacco Bill, like the WHO, prioritises control. This is particularly egregious in a country with a 44% unemployment rate, where high sin taxes exacerbate poverty by making legal products unaffordable, pushing smokers towards dangerous black-market cigarettes.

Perversely, the high taxes and strict regulations that have elevated the illicit market and harmed the legal market have led to a severe reduction in income for the state. Tobacco smugglers and loosie-sellers don’t pay a cent of tax, while Big Tobacco, long maligned, disappears as a source of revenue. In its place they want to eventually increase VAT. Though devastating for the fiscus, this obviously benefits those politicians who might have connections with the illicit trade. 

In effect the WHO and its influence are inadvertently (one hopes) bordering on state capture, as SA sacrifices its constitutional commitment to liberty and sovereignty for global bureaucratic approval.

A more nuanced policy would invest in public awareness campaigns that highlight the relative safety of vaping and other harm reduction tools, tailored to SA’s diverse communities. The Tobacco Bill’s alignment with WHO’s rigid framework overlooks the cultural and economic realities of a country where informal economies — far away from busybody regulation — thrive.

SA should lead by example and foster innovation in harm reduction technologies, and thereby create jobs and reduce health risks. The WHO’s insistence on uniform restrictions ignores evidence from countries such as New Zealand, where liberal vaping policies have slashed smoking rates. By contrast, the SA bill risks entrenching a nanny state that erodes trust in governance. 

By prioritising the WHO’s agenda government neglects its duty to consult citizens, whose voices are drowned out by international edicts. Indeed, Nedlac, which was recently criticised by opposition and business leaders for allowing a foreign anti-tobacco lobbyist to participate in its proceedings — briefed parliament’s health committee on May 14.

The public is still in the dark about who Nedlac, parliament and, above all, the health department, are listening to: rights-bearing South Africans or faceless international bureaucrats with no skin in the game? 

A truly SA approach would balance health goals with economic realities, encouraging small businesses in the vaping industry while cracking down on illicit tobacco networks through tax cuts for cigarettes. 

Reducing the harms of smoking will not come from prohibitionism — a thoroughly discredited approach — or condescension by way of plain packaging or the like. It will come from making safety the path of least resistance: provide more consumer choice in a formal, regulated market, and allow alternative technologies to thrive. 

• Van Staden is head of policy at the Free Market Foundation and SA policy fellow at the international Consumer Choice Centre.