Caswell Tlali
MASERU — If you are a smoker in Lesotho, beware!
There are high chances that you could be buying counterfeit cigarettes that have flooded the market.
An investigation by the Sunday Express has revealed that some street vendors in central Maseru were now selling cheap, counterfeit cigarettes.
A leading cigarette manufacturer, British American Tobacco (BAT) confirmed in an interview that cartons of counterfeit cigarettes have been unleashed on the market.
BAT’s corporate and regulatory affairs manager for Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, Elvis Hermans, confirmed that there were illegal copies of their legitimate products on the market in Lesotho.
“Essentially there are two types of illegal cigarette products: those on which the legally required amounts of taxes have not been paid and those that are illegal copies, or counterfeits, of legitimate products,” Hermans said.
He said trading in illegal cigarettes is a criminal offence which is punishable by law.
Hermans however said in Lesotho it is difficult to tell the difference between a genuine cigarette and a bogus one.
“The most obvious physical difference is that legal cigarettes always display a diamond-shaped imprint on the packs.
“The shape has the letters “SA” printed in the middle. This stands for “Southern Africa” and is short for Sacu — the Southern African Customs Union, of which Lesotho is a member. This shape is an indication that excise tax has been paid on the product,” Hermans said.
“Secondly, the price: Generally if a pack of 20 cigarettes is being sold to customers for less than M13.50 it is likely to be illegal,” he said.
Hermans added: “In neighbouring South Africa where all our products are manufactured, cigarette packs are required to have health notices on both the front and the back of packs. Frequently this is missing on illegal cigarettes.”
He said illegal cigarettes most often undermine the department of health’s mandate to regulate tobacco products.
He added the cigarettes are also often manufactured in factories that do not comply with general standards of cleanliness.
“This is naturally a risk,” Hermans said.
Smokers who talked to the Sunday Express say the ‘taste’ of these counterfeit cigarettes differ markedly from the genuine ones.
“Some of the cigarettes taste sour,” said Lebohang Keketsi, a street vendor who is also a smoker.
He said the most counterfeited cigarettes were Rothman’s and Courtleigh.
’Ma-Alina Motsoasele, another street vendor who said she bought her stock from different hawkers in Maseru, some of her customers had rejected some of the cigarettes after complaining about their tastes.
Motsoasele said being a non-smoker she did not know the difference between a genuine and a counterfeit cigarette.
“I just bought dozens of cigarette packs because they were sold cheap unaware that they were fake,” Motsoasele said.
“I got angry when customers rejected them. I remember one customer who bought five cigarettes and I was forced to refund him when he returned four of them saying they were bogus,” she said.
“However, many customers continue to buy without complaining.”
Motsoasele said she had bought the cigarette packs from a hawker who claimed that he had stolen them from a store in Maseru West Industrial Area.
Several other street vendors confirmed that there was a group of hawkers who were selling counterfeit cigarettes at a low price.
A carton of Rothman’s, which contains 10 boxes of 20 cigarettes each, costs M250 while a counterfeit carton is said to be going for between M150 and M180, which is a bargain.
“I was lured into buying the carton by the low price, unaware that it was counterfeit,” said one street vendor.
Most departments of health around the world require cigarette manufacturers to stick to basic manufacturing regulations to minimise the dangers of tobacco smoking.
This is because nicotine, the primary chemical in tobacco and therefore cigarettes, is addictive.
Tobacco smokers are at a higher risk of suffering from lung cancer.
It is a legal requirement in most countries for manufacturers to carry warning signs on cigarette packs about the dangers of smoking.