08 Aug 2021

 The Tobacco Control Bill of 2021 has passed second reading. The bill passed the stage in Parliament on Thursday. 

With the bill, government  sought to repeal the current act to come up with a more comprehensive legislation aligned to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control articles that Botswana signed and ratified in 2003 and 2005, respectively. 

In so far as the current act is concerned, Parliament feels it does not, among others, address issues of point-of-sale advertising and cross border advertising. 

The weakness in the current act is that it only provides for minimal compliance with the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO, FCTC) Article 5 on reinforcement of the National Focal Point for Tobacco Control.

As such, the envisaged act will strictly prohibit smoking in public places to protect non-smokers from exposure to tobacco smoke. 

Thus it will make such provision to ensure compliance besides forbidding tobacco advertising, sponsoring and promotion.

 The act will further prohibit hiring of persons under the age of 21 to sell tobacco products and the use of deceptive and misleading information on packages such as ‘mild’ , ‘light’ and ultra, among others. Responding to legislators’ comments on the bill, Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Edwin Dikoloti said the envisaged law was intended to control smoking of tobacco, and not necessarily banning smoking of tobacco. 

Dr Dikoloti also reasoned that proposed provisions were aimed mainly at protecting people’s health, adding that government took such obligation very seriously.

He stated that in Botswana smoking posed a serious health hazard because tobacco was sold indiscriminately to young people by street vendors located near schools, with some kiosks selling cigarette candies too. 

Dr Dikoloti said tobacco contained many chemicals some of which were toxic and cancer causing, and killing up to half of all long-term users and globally.

That meant killing more than eight million people each year, with 1.2 million secondhand smokers killed including 65 000 children annually. 

Dr Dikoloti said, tobacco harmed the health, treasury and wellbeing of Batswana, affecting more than 2 000 children (10-14 years old) and 221 000 adults (15+ years old) who used tobacco each day (Tobacco Atlas of 2015). 

Dr Dikoloti further stated that in 2017, about 240 000 of the country’s adult population aged 15 years or older used tobacco, representing a tobacco use rate of 17.6 per cent. 

He said that represented a high tobacco usage rate in the region, according to a survey conducted by Global Adult Tobacco Survey,  though Botswana’s economy was not dependent on tobacco. 

Meanwhile, some legislators were of the view that the envisaged law was too oppressive and would make Botswana a hostile tourist destination while others argued that cigarettes were a source of livelihood for many street vendors, especially single headed households.

 Other MPs decried lack of enough consultation on the new law, arguing that using the Government Gazette only was not enough because it was not easily accessible to people in rural areas. ends