Parliament, Wednesday, 24 June 2026 – The Portfolio Committee on Health adopted a motion of desirability of the Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill in its meeting today. Of the 11 members of the committee, 10 voted in favour of desirability and only one voted against.
The committee Chairperson, Ms Faith Muthambi, told the committee that the extent of the public participation on this Bill showed democracy in action, as the committee took the Bill to 27 municipalities, across all nine provinces. Nearly 7 900 South Africans attended public hearings, and 1 113 rose to make oral submissions. The committee also hosted virtual hearings and heard a further 52 submissions from every corner of our society – doctors and scientists, public-health researchers and academics, traditional healers and faith leaders, medical schemes, labour and civil society, as well as ordinary citizens who simply wanted their voices on the record.
In addition, approximately 40 000 written submissions reached the committee. In addition, the Department of Health, led by the Minister and Deputy Minister, briefed the committee and returned to the committee from time to time and answered the issues our people raised.
Ms Muthambi said the Bill stands among the most thoroughly consulted pieces of health legislation this Parliament has handled. Every committee member and every citizen who gave their time has a share in it, she noted.
The committee learned from the scientific submissions and through its own deliberations that not all tobacco and nicotine products carry the same risk, Ms Muthambi said. Combustible products, which burn, present highest public health risk. Non-combustible products do not belong in the same category, and a law that pretends otherwise is not a stricter law, it is a less accurate one, she said.
“This committee has endorsed the need for differentiation, and I am pleased that the Department of Health, through its responses to public comments in March 2026, has also officially accepted differentiation as a guiding principle, and has subsequently made some concessions and proposed amendments to this effect,” the Chairperson said. “As my predecessor noted that ‘harm is harm’ is not scientifically based, and we cannot use this approach as a guiding principle for this legislation.
“This is not a commercial argument or a special interest’s plea. It is the position of the World Health Organisation itself. Article 1(d) of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the Convention South Africa has ratified, defines tobacco control as a range of supply, demand and harm reduction strategies aimed at reducing consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke.”
The principle of harm reduction must be applied carefully and not dismissed as a loophole in tobacco control, Ms Muthambi said. “As a committee, we have come to recognise this principle, and this version of the Bill, as it stands before us, does not yet deliver it. In its current form it regulates combustible and non-combustible products through the same approach, which we have now learn as not a best approach for our public health.”
“Let me be equally clear about what differentiation does not mean. It does not mean lowering our guard where it matters most. Protection of young people must be stronger for combustible and non-combustible products alike. No child should be initiated into nicotine in any form, and a risk-proportionate framework makes that protection firmer, not weaker.
“Nor does it soften our resolve on illicit trade, which remains catastrophic to every public-health goal in this Bill and which carries a particular danger in our own context. My colleagues, Hon van Staden, Hon Zungula and others, have been very clear that we must contain and significantly reduce illicit tobacco products. South Africa already contends with one of the largest illicit cigarette markets in the world, sustained by socio-economic realities we cannot legislate away overnight: high unemployment, deep inequality, acute price sensitivity, and constrained enforcement capacity,” the Chairperson said.
“And it must be matched by penalties that are proportionate to the conduct they address. A framework that distinguishes between products by their risk must also distinguish between offences by their severity. Hon Motubatse has been very adamant that we must protect the informal sector as well as traditional healers in this Bill. Proportionality in penalty is part of what makes a law both fair and workable.”
Ms Muthambi said no country on this continent has yet built a tobacco and nicotine framework that is genuinely risk-proportionate, evidence-led and future-proof. South Africa can be the first and the world is watching how we do it.
“We can pass a law that other parliaments study: not because it was the harshest or the most permissive, but because it was the most intelligent one that brings all products into scope, protects children and youth fiercely, confronts illicit trade squarely, and distinguishes honestly between what burns and what does not.”
Ms Muthambi continued: “The subject matter of this Bill is desirable. South Africa needs this law. But this vote is not an endorsement of the text as it stands; it is a mandate to improve it. By voting to advance this Bill, we commit ourselves to a clause-by-clause process in which differentiation and harm reduction are not an afterthought, but the lens through which every provision is tested. That is the change we are voting for today.
“So let us advance this Bill and do the harder, finer work of making it worthy of the principles we have come to recognise, and of the people who gave us forty thousand reasons to get it right.”
ISSUED BY THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMUNICATION SERVICES ON BEHALF OF THE CHAIRPERSON OF THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, MS FAITH MUTHAMBI.
For media enquiries or interviews with the Chairperson, please contact the Committee’s Media Officer:
Name: Ms Yoliswa Landu
Parliamentary Communication Services
Tel: 021 403 8203
Cell: 081 497 4694
E-mail: ylandu@parliament.gov.za
Arrange a tour