Malaysia’s Minister of Health, Khairy Jamaluddin, said that the government will be banning the sale of cigarettes and tobacco (including vaporisers and e-cigarettes) for those who are born after 2005, according to Free Malaysia Today.
Khairy was speaking at the World Health Organisation’s executive board meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland.
He posted a snippet of his speech onto Twitter, calling the move a “generation endgame to smoking” and is intending to pass the legislation later this year.
Khairy added that he believes this will help to prevent and control non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, lung cancer and hypertension.
This move is reminiscent of New Zealand’s decision to eventually ban the sale of tobacco for people who are born after 2008.
The response to Khairy’s announcement was met with generally positive reception, with his tweet garnering about 354.4k views, 3,472 likes and 1,984 retweets.
Uncontrollable black market
However, the Malaysian International Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MICCI) said that the tobacco ban would affect businesses, while also predicting an “uncontrollable black market” for tobacco products, according to The Star.
MICCI said that the black market controls a 57% share of the tobacco market, with 6 out of 10 packets of cigarettes sold in Malaysia, coming from illegal sources.
Netizens’ comments
- Honest from deep inside, please do it. I have been struggling with it for 15 years now, and still struggle to cut it out. Just do it.