With the South African government being strict in tobacco control policy, there has been a marked reduction in the prevalence of smoking, a survey showed on Tuesday. "The number of adult smokers has been halved over the last 20 years," said the South African national health and nutrition examination survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).

The HSRC is a statutory body, primarily conducting largely- scale policy-related social scientific projects for the government and non-governmental organizations.

The HSRC called for a total ban on tobacco by passing the legislation.

In 1993, the first tobacco products control act was passed in South Africa, regulating smoking in public areas and prohibiting tobacco sales to people under the age of 16.

In 2001, the South African government started to implement the tobacco products control amendment act passed in 1999, which prohibited all advertising and promotion of tobacco products and restricted smoking in public places such as workplaces, restaurants, bars and public transport.

In talking about the new policy on the tobacco control in Pretoria on Tuesday, Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi stressed that the South African government will not stop trying to eliminate smoking. "There is no scientist, researcher or any prominent person in the world who has been able to convince us on the contribution that tobacco did to humanity," said the minister. "All it did is death," he added.

According to the World Health Organization report in July 2013, tobacco kills up to half of its users, with the death number totalling nearly 6 million people in the world each year.

Nearly 80 percent of the world's 1 billion smokers live in low and middle-income countries, according to the report.

As part of the efforts to reduce the number of smokers, the South African government is currently looking at increasing the minimum legal age for smokers to 18.

"There is going to be no excuse or apology on the use of tobacco," said Motsoaledi.