This article was first published by Daily Friend on 16 October 2025
The tobacco industry has every right to advocate for itself. Yet in South Africa and around the world, it is increasingly being muzzled, while foreign billionaire-activists are given free rein to shape policy. This imbalance undermines democracy and sets a troubling precedent: one side is silenced while the other dominates the conversation.
Rallying against the influence of “Big Tobacco” is nothing new. Zano Kunene’s recent Bhekisisa report, for example, draws a shocking – and completely false – comparison between Russia forcing women into arms factories and the tobacco industry contracting influencers to speak on its behalf.
Such rhetoric reveals the deeper problem: the principle of “anti-lobbying” is not inherently wrong, but it is always hypocritical and self-serving. Big Tobacco is not allowed to participate in policy formation, but Big Nanny is welcomed with open arms.
While billionaires like Michael Bloomberg fund aggressive anti-tobacco lobbying worldwide, the tobacco industry is systematically silenced, unable to defend its interests or even contribute to policymaking.
Bar on policy participation
This dynamic is entrenched in the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and mirrored in South Africa’s Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill. The result is a troubling precedent that foreign agendas increasingly dictate South Africa’s pretence to democracy.
Article 5.3 of the FCTC instructs member states to “protect [tobacco control] policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.”
By branding the industry’s involvement as inherently corrupt, it denies that businesses, like other stakeholders, might have valid perspectives – especially on policies that directly affect it.
The South African Tobacco Bill runs with this sentiment. It prohibits manufacturers, importers, and distributors from providing “financial or other support” to civic groups, welfare organisations, communities, or political parties. This does not just limit lobbying; it obliterates the industry’s ability to participate in civic life, “directly or indirectly.”
Glaring hypocrisy
Meanwhile, the unchecked influence of foreign anti-tobacco crusaders such as Bloomberg Philanthropies actively shapes global policy. Bloomberg Philanthropies and its Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products (STOP) initiative have channelled billions into advocacy campaigns, research, and lobbying across the globe, including in South Africa.
In 2022, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom abandoned any pretence of impartiality and even declared, “STOP is a warning call to Big Tobacco that they are on notice.”
This is simply lobbying by another name – indistinguishable from the very activities decried when undertaken by the industry itself.
The hypocrisy is glaring. One side wields vast resources and enjoys government access, while the other is banned from defending itself. If such restrictions were applied to Bloomberg and the WHO, they would immediately invoke freedom of expression. To allow this asymmetry is not just unfair – it is unconstitutional, undermining the right to equality before the law.
Nothing about us without us
The stakes are high. South Africa is still a democracy, and so-called lobbying – stakeholder participation in policy formation – is a form of democratic discourse. If professionals and industrialists cannot engage government or the public, or employ publicity and policy experts to do so, democracy itself is hollow. Today the target is Big Tobacco. Tomorrow it will be Big Sugar, then Big Meat. If the state can bar one industry from participating, what prevents it from silencing dissenting political voices altogether?
One can, of course, justify endless restrictions by appealing to “public health” or the “public interest.” But let’s not pretend this is compatible with free expression, public participation, or the principle of nihil de nobis, sine nobis – nothing about us without us.
The tobacco industry is not an abstraction: it is a legitimate enterprise, employing millions directly and indirectly, generating tax revenue, and serving a third of adult South African consumers who freely choose its products. Excluding it from debate does not end smoking; it only fuels the illicit trade, which already accounts for two-thirds of the market.
Designated punching bag
And spare a thought for smokers themselves – society’s designated punching bag – who have no voice in this matter whatsoever. They are not allowed to know about alternative products such as heated tobacco or nicotine pouches – scientifically shown to be significantly less harmful than cigarettes – which Bloomberg has already decided is not good for them.
Hiding behind empty appeals to “public health” to justify all this will not do. Everything is potentially harmful, from cigarettes, to alcohol, to sugar, to eating too much meat, to eating too little meat, to sitting or sleeping too much, to sleeping too little.
The baseless public health appeal can be extended ever onwards until nothing remains of human freedom. The balance is meant to be struck in the realm of democratic contestation: every now and then you win some, then you lose some.
This is impossible if the rules of the game exclude some from the debate altogether.
Some might be okay with that. You might be of the view that people should spend their 80 or so years on this mortal coil living the lives that others – activists and politicians – want for them, rather than the often-messy ones they would choose for themselves.
But if you, like me, value a (truly) free society, it is a problem. I and many others freely decide not to smoke, but to suppose this entitles us to dictate to others is an unjustifiable stretch.
Bait-and-switch
The bait-and-switch (or, better yet, the motte-and-bailey argument) underlying tobacco control still often rears its head.
Activists and journalists romantically claim to simply favour “education” and “information.” After all, smokers must know the dangers of smoking, and who can disagree with such a sentiment? And, indeed, this is where tobacco regulation began.
But, with this façade erected, a whole array of measures aimed at effectively invalidating the personal, medical, and economic decisions made by adults are brought to bear.
The motte is easy to defend – “we just want people to know the truth!” – but the bailey, the true agenda – the idea that these activists have been crowned lords over everyone’s lives – is indefensible.
Cigarettes – like sugar, cars, and knives – kill, and that’s undeniable. But the solution to public health challenges requires transparent, honest debate – not silencing one side while amplifying another.
By aligning itself with the FCTC’s anti-democratic ethos and Bloomberg’s paternalistic campaign, South Africa is ceding control of its policymaking to foreign interests that prioritise ideological purity over democratic fairness. It is yet another instance of an opportunistic form of democracy being weaponised against its own transcendent purpose.
The Tobacco Bill’s prohibition on industry support for civil society or political entities risks chilling civic engagement, as it creates a climate where association with certain interests becomes taboo. While society itself can create such social pressures, this kind of ideological gatekeeping has no place in the statute books of a supposed constitutional democracy.
The tobacco industry, like any other, has a right to advocate on its own behalf. Denying that right not only weakens one sector but threatens the foundations of a free society.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
