Durban - A group representing 56 000 South African smokers has lodged an application in the highest court of the land begging it to overturn the “cruel and inhumane” tobacco ban.
The group says the ban has turned honest citizens into “common criminals” scheming to get their next nicotine fix on the black market.
In a 360-page application filed in the Constitutional Court last week, Justice for RSA, a non-profit organisation formed to represent smokers and vapers who connected via the Smokers Against Lockdown Cigarette Ban Facebook page, has requested an order to be granted direct access to the court, as well as for Regulation 45(1) under section 27(2) of the Disaster Management Act Regulation 45(1) to be set aside and declared “unconstitutional”.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, and the National Coronavirus Council are respondents in the matter.
Bradley Hirner, a co-founder of Justice for RSA, which was formed to raise funds and represent ordinary smokers in the legal action, said in his founding affidavit that it was in the interests of justice and to prevent the suicides of members who were emotionally distressed without legal access to cigarettes, that the group had directly approached the Constitutional Court.
In his affidavit he cites the cases of several smokers from their own affidavits, who suffer from psychiatric conditions such as bi-polar mood disorder and depression, who say they cannot cope without cigarettes and that they were contemplating suicide and felt like criminals.
He said the ban had infringed smokers’ constitutional rights to equality and dignity as enshrined in the Bill of Rights when during lockdown they were forced to either stop smoking or to seek cigarettes in the illicit market, which many had opted to do at great expense as they had no intention of quitting.
He said most smokers were not affluent and some had managed to scrape together just R12 to contribute to the legal costs of the application.
“Many smokers feel that they have been reduced to common criminals and that their dignity has been ripped away from them.
“They must scheme and plan, almost the same, I would imagine, as when buying illegal drugs, where to buy cigarettes without being caught by the police,” Hirner said.
Hirner added that smoking was a “legal crutch” for millions to assist them with the pressures of daily life, but also “to cope with psychiatric conditions such as depression, bipolar mood disorder.”
“These citizens have now been degraded to second-class citizens and criminals in the eye of the government, forced to buy extremely questionable cigarettes at exorbitant prices,” he said.
“Was this really the intent of this regulation? To reduce normal, law abiding citizens, some of them at a well-advanced age and others suffering from psychiatric conditions, to common criminals?”
Hirner argued that there was no evidence that smokers were more susceptible to the virus and likely to need ICU beds, but to the contrary said that researchers were exploring an apparent direct link between nicotine and Covid-19.
“Human trials are set to commence in Canada on a nicotine-based potential cure it seems that while there is not even anecdotal evidence to support a tobacco ban that there is at least prima facie evidence to support the notion that it could be the silver bullet the world is waiting for,” he said.
The presidency and Dlamini Zuma's spokesperson, Lungi Mtshali, had not responded to questions regarding whether they would oppose the application at the time of publication yesterday.
The Mercury