Minister in the presidency Jackson Mthembu has ruled out any possibility of talks with the cigarette industry, saying the cabinet will not back down on its decision to ban the sale of cigarettes.
BAT argues that President Cyril Ramaphosa had initially announced that cigarette sales would be allowed.
"When we went into the pandemic, we had to take the decision of what is going to be the key driver and we said it would be considerations of health and the risks," he said. For its part, the tobacco industry feels vindicated by a survey conducted in April that found one in four smokers are still getting their nicotine fix despite the ban on legal sales. The survey by the Human Sciences Research Council found that access to tobacco products is particularly easy in informal settlements.
The HSRC survey was conducted over three weeks in April, with a sample of 19,330 participants ranging between the ages of 18 and 59. Most, 70%, were aged between 25 and 59. BAT, the country's largest cigarette producer, cited the findings of the HSRC survey in its letter to Dlamini-Zuma.
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