Dirty Tobacco: Spies, Lies and Mega-Profits by Telita Snyckers is out now.
As a former smoker myself, I was hit hard by the recent ban on cigarettes. Like every other nicotine addict, I had stocked up just enough to ride out those first 21 days – which then became 35 days. Then, the second bombshell dropped: we had finally made it to Level 4, but cigarettes were still banned. Smokers were outraged, to say the least.
So people turned to the black market to get their nicotine fix. People were meeting up in empty parking lots, exchanging money for a pack of cigarettes like they were buying cocaine. My Facebook feed was in an uproar; that infamous photograph of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma with tobacco trader Adriano Mazzotti was doing the rounds; and theories began to circulate that the South African government was in bed with cigarette smugglers. It seemed our only hope was for Big Tobacco to take them to court.
So of course, when I came upon Telita Snyckers’s book Dirty Tobacco: Spies, Lies and Mega-Profits, I was intrigued. Was there any truth to all the conspiracy theories? I had to talk to the author herself.
DIRTY TOBACCO
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