- Cogta Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma roundly failed to convince the Supreme Court of Appeal that a pandemic-linked attempt to stop people smoking had made any sense.
- Dlamini Zuma and President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday won only costs against them in their effort to overturn an earlier high court victory for British American Tobacco on the lockdown cigarette ban. ''The court's strongest language was reserved for Dlamini Zuma's argument that up to 15% of smokers had quit during the ban because they could not afford the more expensive black market cigarettes that everyone else had turned to.
Saying the ban "was effective because most smokers would have contravened the law, but a small minority of them would not have been able to afford the prices of illicit cigarettes, is constitutionally perverse – it relies on unlawful conduct (the sale of illegal cigarettes at a premium) in order to achieve the intended outcome (a reduction in smoking)," the court said. - The court found "constitutionally perverse" the minister's argument that expensive black market cigarettes had been a good thing.
- www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
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No wonder you were confused!
