President Ramaphosa announced a state of disaster on 15 March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 23 March 2020, the president announced that the country would be placed in a three-week lockdown, starting on 27 March 2020. The lockdown greatly restricted all movement of people and goods, and restricted operations in many industries. On 25 March 2020, the government announced a ban on the sale of all tobacco products; the reason being that tobacco and vaping products were declared ‘non-essential’ products.

This scenario presented a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity, and we decided to conduct a survey on the impact of the sales ban on smoking behaviour. Since movement was so restricted, the survey had to be done in the form of a telephone and/or online survey. We decided on an online survey, because doing a telephonic survey would be too time-consuming and expensive. We did not have the time to create a nationally-representative sampling frame. There was a strong expectation that the tobacco sales ban could be lifted at any time, so haste was essential.

Between 29 April and 11 May 2020, we conducted an online survey among current smokers. We publicised the survey, using (1) Facebook, (2) a petition site and (3) Moya (a data-free smartphone application). We collected more than 12 000 responses. On 15 May 2020 we published a report, entitled  ‘Lighting up the illicit market: Smokers' responses to the cigarette sales ban in South Africa’ on the REEP website.

On 27 April 2020, the president announced that the sales ban would be lifted when the country moved to a slightly less stringent level of lockdown. A few days later this decision was reversed by Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who was chairing the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC). The tobacco sales ban remained in place on 1 May 2020, when the country was moved to a lower level of lockdown. Ironically, the ban on alcohol sales was lifted on 1 May 2020, at least temporarily.

The report published on 15 May 2020 drew extensive media attention. Members of the research team were interviewed numerous times on radio and on television. The REEP website was visited by more than 1000 unique visitors in the week following the publication of the report (it still attracts attention, more than four years after the report was published, and has been viewed over 400 times in the past 12 months). We sent the report, together with an executive summary, to each NCCC member. Several members of the NCCC acknowledged the report; many did not.

The survey results indicated that the sales ban caused some smokers to quit, but that the vast majority continued smoking. Most respondents were able to purchase cigarettes, often from unconventional sources, and at highly-elevated prices. Many respondents commented that the sales ban, and the difficulty of purchasing cigarettes, caused them additional stress. Based on our findings, we concluded that, if the NCCC intended that the ban cause smokers to stop smoking, the sales ban was not doing what it was intended to do. The report recommended that the sales ban be lifted as soon as possible.

Given the extensions to the sales ban, we conducted a second online survey between 4 and 19 June 2020. For the duration of this period, the sales ban was still in place. More than 23 000 respondents completed the second online questionnaire. The report, entitled ‘Smoking and quitting behaviour in lockdown South Africa: results from a second survey’,  summarised the results of the second survey and was published on 21 July 2020. The findings were not materially different from the first report, except for a larger increase in the price of cigarettes. It was clear from our findings that most of the small number of people who quit smoking during the sales ban did so during the first few weeks of the ban. Only a trickle of people quit in the later weeks of the sales ban. In the report we predicted that the sales ban would likely entrench South Africa’s illicit market and that it would remain a problem even after the sales ban ended.

Unfortunately, that prediction was correct, and the effect was even more dramatic than we had expected. Again, the report received much media attention, and again we sent copies of the report to the NCCC members.

After the sales ban was lifted on 18 August 2020, we conducted another online survey between 16 September and 6 October 2020. For this survey we contacted the 20 000 or so people who completed the second survey and who had given us permission to contact them again. In total about 3 600 people completed the third survey. The report, entitled ‘Back To Normal? Smoking and Quitting Behaviour in South Africa after the Tobacco Sales Ban: Results From A Third Survey’ was published on the REEP website on 10 December 2020.

In about August 2020 we were able to persuade the researchers of the National Income Dynamics Study - Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) to include several tobacco-related questions in the third wave of the NIDS-CRAM survey. The data for this wave were collected in November 2020 (after the sales ban had been lifted). NIDS-CRAM is a broadly nationally-representative telephone survey, based on the sampling frame of NIDS. Results from five waves of NIDS-CRAM, published as reports on their website, became an authoritative voice (possibly the most authoritative in the country) on the social and economic impact of COVID-19. In February 2021, as part of the NIDS-CRAM Wave 3 launch, we published a report on the tobacco sales ban, entitled ‘Market impact of the COVID-19 national cigarette sales ban in South Africa’. Given changing priorities at NIDS-CRAM, and because the sales ban had been lifted in August 2020, and was thus not front of mind in the public consciousness, no tobacco-related questions were included in subsequent waves of NIDS-CRAM.

NIDS-CRAM gave us an opportunity to compare some of the results from REEP’s online survey – which were based on a large, but not nationally representative sample – with a broadly nationally representative survey. Our results were mostly in line with those of NIDS-CRAM.

Between 2021 and 2024, we published four peer-reviewed journal articles based on the research we conducted around the tobacco sales ban. Two of these papers (located here and here) were based on the data collected during the sales ban, one paper was based on the NIDS-CRAM data, and one paper considered how the sales ban was reported on in the media.

Through these reports, academic papers, and media engagements, REEP made it clear that we are an independent research unit. We emphasise that REEP does not receive any tobacco-industry funding. In addition, we are independent from people in the public health community that wanted us to find a favourable result. We increased our credibility as an independent research unit with the National Treasury.