The comments period only closes in August. Thereafter the comments need to be considered and potential changes made. Then the final law needs to be drafted and presented to the provinces and Parliament for discussion and approval. Thereafter the president can sign and promulgate. So it will be a while yet, at least four months depending on how quickly they want to push it through. If it isn't deemed that urgent, it may be a year yet.
I would like to agree with @RichJB on this one. Currently the land reform bill and the SARB bill will get most attention since that will attract more voters next year. And then parliament will be absent for a big part of next year. So if we are very lucky it might still be 2 years before they really look into this. But thats being very optimistic. We still need to get our voices out there.
I think we first need people to give presentations at schools to discourage young children from smoking in the first place. Show them horrifying pictures of a smokers ling. Scare them out of even considering it.
Then we need people like ourselves who already vape to reach out to smokers and say to them, stop that. Vaping is a far safer alternative to smoking and introduce them to vaping. Give them the medical facts that are available so far that prove categorically that vaping is safer than smoking.
I used to smoke 40 to 50 strong cigarettes a day. Maybe even 60 on a good day. To cut a long story short, I went from strong to very mild cigarettes and I vaped in-between. One day I forgot completely about the cigarettes and vaped for 4 hours solid. When I smoked one, it tasted crap. That was the last one I smoked. I have an RTA. I build my own coils now. I build my deck, and now I am mixing my own juices. I get so much pleasure out of it. With cigarettes, I used to pull the stick out of the box. Put it out. Next one please, one after the other after the other.......... Its boring crap.
Vaping is just so much more fun. You have a mod and you have an atomizer. You need to maintain that atomizer. You need to clean it. You need to replace the wick. You need to replace the coils from time to time. That gives me something to do and keep me occupied. You can't even compare it with smoking. I love blowing huge clouds of vape in smoking rooms at airports while other smokers blow out their feeble little blue tobacco clouds. Well, maybe I am daft bat I am certainly like to think that I am not stupid. Vaping is so much more fun.
That pretty much summonses the kind of presentation I would give if I was asked to. Lets educate people including our single minded health minister who insists that a vape cloud is smoke. Shame on him!
Let me get away now before this becomes a thousand page book.
I employ one. She has been working for me for years. She has never complained once about my smoking. She did mention how much better the the house smells since I have stopped smoking. One day she saw the scale and all the flavor bottles and asked me if I was opening a chemist. I guess they would look like medicine bottles to somebody who doesn't know better. That had me giggling for a while,