ArticleTobacco induced diseases2023
Quitting behavior during the tobacco sales ban in South Africa: Results from a broadly nationally representative survey.
Article in Tobacco induced diseases, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Changes in tobacco use in rural South Africa during the 2020 tobacco sales ban: an analysis of current and previous behaviours using cross-sectional data.Tobacco control · 2025Article
- COVID-19 in patients with severe mental illness: An analysis of in-patients at a psychiatric hospital in Cape Town.The South African journal of psychiatry : SAJP : the journal of the Society of Psychiatrists of South Africa · 2025Article
- Initiation, cessation and relapse of tobacco smoking over a 3-year period among participants aged ≥15 years in a large longitudinal cohort in rural South Africa.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
introductionIn response to COVID-19, the South African government banned the sale of tobacco products for 20 weeks. Before the ban, the illicit cigarette market was well-entrenched and smoking cessation services were not widely available. Several surveys conducted to ascertain cigarette smokers' responses to the ban reported substantial differences in the proportion of smokers who quit. This study provides a broadly nationally representative ex-post investigation into cigarette smokers' quitting behavior related to the sales ban.
methodsWe used data from wave three of NIDS-CRAM (the National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey) conducted in November-December 2020. We first investigated the proportion of people who quit and who continued smoking during and after the sales ban. We subsequently linked the NIDS-CRAM survey to the fifth wave of NIDS (2017) to identify a subset of established smokers, and considered whether their quitting behavior differed from that of all smokers who smoked at the start of the sales ban.
resultsThe cross-sectional analysis showed that 7.8% of cigarette smokers quit during the sales ban, but that 55% of these quitters relapsed after it was lifted. Of the pre-ban smokers, 3.5% indicated that they did not smoke both during and after the sales ban, and 3.7% quit after the ban was lifted. The longitudinal analysis showed that 7% of people who were smoking in 2017, quit smoking cigarettes during the tobacco sales ban, but that >70% of quitters relapsed after it was lifted. Only 2% of pre-ban established smokers indicated that they did not smoke during or after the ban.
conclusionsThe sales ban did not have the intended objective of encouraging large-scale smoking cessation. This reflects policy failures to provide smokers with appropriate cessation support and to effectively control the illicit market both prior to and during the sales ban.
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