World Consumer Rights Day, which was marked recently on 15 March, was little cause for celebration in South Africa, where the direction of policy continues to raise serious concerns about growing restrictions on consumer choice across a number of fronts.
That the conception of consumer rights has shifted away from empowering informed individuals to choose, and towards restricting their freedom of choice in the name of protection, is a deeply unfortunate development that has resulted in a public policy approach that poses a grave danger to consumer choice.
One example of a proposed policy that rests on this flawed conception of consumer rights is the Tobacco Bill, which is currently at an advanced stage for adoption. Chief among several of its other punitive and paternalistic provisions – which risk ballooning the illicit market that already dominates the tobacco trade – is the effective criminalisation of vaping.
The Bill makes no meaningful distinction between tobacco and vaping products, treating both as drivers of nicotine addiction that should be subjected to advertising bans, plain packaging, and display restrictions. More worryingly, it uses indirect language that could pave the way for smokers and vapers to be penalised for consuming these products in their own homes or vehicles, under certain circumstances.
Central to this push for greater control is the familiar and convenient invocation of children and young people (in this case), who are said to need protection from the perceived scourge of nicotine addiction that is supposedly being driven by the relentless advertising and public display of products by predatory operators.
This, of course, is misleading, because it not only ignores credible research on vaping as a harm-reduction mechanism, but also infantilises young people and assumes that they are incapable of making informed choices about their own habits.
A proper understanding of consumer rights does not treat young people as infants in need of protection by a paternalistic state, but as decision-makers with agency and access to information about the products that they choose to consume. It is unreasonable to argue that young people lack access to information on the risks associated with vaping and smoking. They do have access, and those who choose to consume these products do so with an awareness of these risks.
Those who do not exercise their agency to consume these products in the face of advertising and public displays are no different from those who do, in that they too can choose to stop consuming these products.
If the logic of paternalism is accepted, and individuals are treated as incapable of making choices about their own habits, then the principle of consumer choice might as well be abandoned altogether. The state might as well be given expansive power to control and regulate what people may consume and how.
Once this path is taken, freedom will be curtailed and the bill in question will only worsen the existing situation. It will further entrench an already dominant illicit market, while penalising a legal one that has already been almost obliterated. The result will be greater danger for not just young people, but also for everyone else who consumes tobacco and vaping products.
It is therefore important to recognise these dangers and revert to a proper understanding of consumer rights that does not deny the risks associated with certain products, but affirms that consumers are decision-makers with agency that should not be undermined.
Freedom is inherently messy; it should not be curtailed in the name of paternalism or a distorted conception of consumer rights that undermines consumer choice. It must be defended and upheld, even when people make decisions we think are wrong or detrimental for their well-being.
The Tobacco Bill tragically rests on this distorted conception of consumer rights, and this is ultimately what makes it a grave threat to consumer choice. If it does eventually become law, it will subvert people’s freedom and produce a host of negative outcomes that will undermine the very objectives of those who believe state paternalism is the solution.
[Image: https://pixnio.com/objects/cigarettes/four-used-cigarette-butts-along-with-their-ashes]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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