Tobacco industry accused of pushing vapes on teens

Deputy health minister Joe Phaahla and public health advocates have pushed back against tobacco industry claims that their electronic devices are designed to help people quit cigarettes, accusing companies of deliberately marketing their products to South Africans who have never smoked.

The tobacco industry is increasingly promoting the concept of “harm reduction”, positioning itself as seeking to help smokers quit and switch to less harmful products such as heated tobacco devices or e-cigarettes.

However, public health advocates question whether these new-generation products are safer, arguing there is insufficient data on their longterm effects, particularly among teenagers.

The SA market had been flooded with electronic nicotine-delivery devices and flavoured liquids aimed at young people, in a “calculated effort to perpetuate nicotine addiction for profit”, Phaahla said on Monday.

“These products are not harmless ... they all carry serious health risks and often lead to dual use, which undermines any harm reduction narrative that the industry tries to promote,” he said at an event hosted by the health department to mark World No Tobacco Day, which fell on May 31.

The prevalence of smoking and e-cigarettes use increased in SA between 2010 and 2024, indicating new-generation products were not helping people quit cigarettes, said Lekan AyoYusuf, director of the Africa Centre for Tobacco Industry Monitoring and Policy Research.

The proportion of people aged 16 and over who smoked tobacco rose from 18% in 2010 to 34% in 2024, while the prevalence of e-cigarette use rose from 0.48% to 7.7% over the same period, he said, citing figures from the 2024 SA Social Attitudes Survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council.

The number of smokers in SA rose from 9.5-million to 14.9-million during this time, demonstrating that the introduction of e-cigarettes had not led to a reduction in smoking, he said.

“That is 5.4-million more people destined for disease and death. There is nothing wrong with the concept of harm reduction, but not the way the tobacco industry is doing it. They want to reduce harm to their profit, not public health,” Ayo-Yusuf said.

“You can’t have harm reduction if someone who never smoked starts using e-cigarettes,” he added.

A similar trend was seen in data collected by the US research firm Nielsen, which showed increased sales volumes for cigarettes, heated tobacco products and e-cigarettes in SA between 2019 and 2021, he said.

Ayo-Yusuf appealed to MPs to consider the data as they deliberate on the draft Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill, now before the portfolio committee on health. The bill proposes tougher tobacco restrictions and seeks to regulate e-cigarettes and new-generation products in the same way as traditional tobacco products.

Delays in processing the tobacco bill, first flighted in 2018, had enabled unrestricted vape sales to teenagers and their use was soaring among schoolchildren, UCT pulmonologist Richard van Zyl Smit said.

He led a study, published in the Lancet medical journal last year, that found one in six SA high school students were using e-cigarettes. Almost half of them vaped within an hour of waking up, suggesting they were highly addicted to nicotine.

“The industry changed the formulation of nicotine in e-cigarettes to make it easier to be absorbed, softer on the palate and more addictive. This is a designer drug,” he said.

Scientists are particularly concerned about nicotine addiction among teenagers because their brains are still developing.

Industry data demonstrated nicotine potentially increased a user’s risk of flu, pneumococcal disease and tuberculosis, Van Zyl Smit said.