Tunatazama - Community Monitors

National cigarette ban – negative reaction from community

27 May 2020
Motlhabe – Moses Kotane
Lentswe Buda

The banning of the cigarettes has brought negative reactions from people in the rural areas as it does not stop the cigarettes from getting sold but it is being sold at very high prices. Many people are finding it hard to quit since some of them they have been smoking for decades now they are deeply addicted to even consider quitting.

To those who have contacts to stock more cigarettes from bottle stores and taverns or liquor shops it is a risky business opportunity to them as they make a lot of money out of this because they have raised the prices way higher than twice the normal prices.eg. Normal prices for those cigarettes were one rand each and a twenty filter was ten- fifteen rands but now the lowest price of each cigarette is four rands and the lowest price of each twenty filter is seventy rands. Cigarettes which can be accessed in Motlhabe are “SHASHA, CASPIAN and RG” which we believe they might be products of the black market because most of the smokers are complaining on how they causing none-stop coughing.


The reason for the ban to sale of cigarettes is to stop the spread of Covid19 as people normally share cigarettes but in results of the ban the cigarette is now more expensive and that leads to the situation where more people get to share one cigarette than before.