Taverners want smoking rules to "go up in smoke"

Township Liquor Traders Association secretary and shebeen owner Patric Poggenpoel said health authorities had decided on the rules without consulting shebeen and tavern owners.

"Putting the regulations into effect in a township environment is impossible," he said.

"Thess regulations must be rejected because they are impossible to implement," he added.

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has published the new rules under the Tobacco Products Control Act.

They prohibit smoking in "any public place" or outdoor environment, including sport facilities, playgrounds, zoos, schools and child care facilities, health facilities, outdoor venues, covered walkways and parking areas and beaches where people are allowed to swim.

Smoking will also be prohibited within 10-metres of windows, doorways or an entrance to a public place.

Poggenpoel said requiring smokers to go 10-metres from a shebeen doorway would put smokers on sidewalks where they would inconvenience pedestrians.

Managing patrons and their safety would be difficult outside the shebeen's property.

New rules are "elitist"

Poggenpoel said shebeen owners had not been consulted on the rules and asked the department of health to reconsider.

"The government must come and see how we operate before just imposing regulations on our businesses," Poggenpoel said.

"We are gatvol that government has imposed regulations on how we run our businesses."

Health spokesman Fidel Radebe did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Poggenpoel was speaking at a news briefing at the Free Market Foundation in Bryanston.

Free Market Foundation director Leon Louw called the new rules "ill-considered" and "elitist" as they did not take into account their practical implications.

"It's highly elitist because it pre-supposes an area with a lot of space," Louw said.

He said the restrictions would prevent smokers in an office park from puffing outside of their buildings, and instead required them to go onto the street.

He argued that this would damage productivity as workers would now spend more time away from their desks.

Poggenpoel said if the new rules went ahead some business owners and organisations would likely challenge it in court.

He said that while many shebeens would have difficulty affording a court challenge, he hoped that non-profit legal resource centres would come to their aid.

Law Review Project researcher Tebogo Sawapa said the new regulations were "unconstitutional".

He argued that the rules would infringe on smokers' rights to freely associate by forcing them to go outdoors to smoke.

"The regulation is forcing shebeen owners to treat their customers like leprous people," Sawapa said.

Sawapa said if the rules forced smokers onto sidewalks, this would cause an infringement to a healthy environment -- to pedestrians on that sidewalk.

The main problem, he said, was the way the new smoking rules were to be put into practice.

"The minister of health by... proposing this type of regulation has violated the Constitution."

Sawapa said the minister had the power to alter rules administratively, but any substantive change -- such as the new smoking rules -- must be made through Parliament. This process would also allow for more public consultation.

Source: Sapa via I-Net Bridge.