Does SA’s new Tobacco Bill have enough horsepower to thwart Formula 1 races on TV?

The car sported a striking wavy polka-dot design in papaya orange and ocean blue on each side and the front wings. 

But its most prominent feature was the logo for the e-cigarette brand Vuse splashed across the design. 

In November 2023, Formula One (F1) team McLaren revealed their newly branded racing car, featuring a paint job by the Saudi Arabian artist Nujood Al-Otaibi ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that month. 

For the past three years, artists like Al-Otaibi, who has a hearing problem, have shown their work through British American Tobacco’s (BAT) “Driven by Change” initiative. By partnering with McLaren and Driven by Diversity, they want to make motorsports accessible to everyone, they say. 

The catch is that their designs are used to promote a BAT product – in this case its e-cigarette brand Vuse. Putting a bright spin on tobacco – even for non-traditional products such as vapes – is an old industry trick. 

E-cigarettes, or vapes, are electronic devices that heat a nicotine-containing liquid to produce a vapour the user inhales. Nicotine, which comes from tobacco leaves, is the drug that gets you hooked on tobacco products like traditional cigarettes and cigars, which is why experts warn that vaping could entice non-smokers to start using tobacco.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrVbLLXXe_k

This is bad news for people’s health, since research has convincingly shown that the chemicals people inhale when smoking traditional cigarettes help to cause cancer, lung problems and heart disease.

As a member of the World Health Organization’s (WHO's) anti-smoking treaty since 2005, South Africa promised to make laws that will clamp down on advertising of tobacco products to stop people from picking up the habit.

Because e-cigarettes could push someone to start smoking, the minister of finance has placed a sin tax on vapes similar to the tax on tobacco products, and the planned new Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill proposes that vape advertising should be controlled in the same way as tobacco advertising.

In 2021, 12.7 million South Africans used tobacco, with just more than 11 million of them getting their fix from smoking. The habit cost the country R42-billion in lost productivity and healthcare expenses already back in 2016, with treatment for smoking-related illnesses such as cancer, heart problems and lung disease accounting for about 4% of what the country spent on healthcare in that year, an analysis shows. Moreover, close to 26,000 people are thought to have died from smoking that year – close to 40% of Aids deaths then. 

But the planned Bill has been sitting in limbo on politicians’ desks for the past five years, and the current Tobacco Products Control Act only prohibits some types of marketing. 

For example, smoking and tobacco products shown in international broadcasts are allowed and the tobacco industry may sponsor an activity or event as long as it isn’t used to drive up sales. In contrast, film material produced locally may not show any smoking and it can’t be advertised in magazines or newspapers, on billboards or on TV or radio. 

In the meantime, while legislators are dawdling to decide on the new Bill, tobacco companies like BAT and Philip Morris International (PMI) have found ways to get around the proposed stricter rules on vapes – not only in South Africa – by tapping into F1’s fan base to punt their products. 

What drives tobacco companies to sponsor F1?

A Sauber team Formula 1 car passes an advertising billboard for Philip Morris's Marlboro cigarettes during a practice round at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on 5 March 2004. (Photo:Phil Weymouth / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.