Malaysians born after 2005 might not be able to legally buy cigarettes in their lifetime

Minister of Health Khairy Jamaluddin announces that the Malaysian government plans to prohibit the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products to people born after 2005. This means that Malaysians who are 17 years old today would not be able to legally buy tobacco next year when they turn 18—the legal age for smoking in Malaysia—or ever in their lifetime.

“We, like some other WPRO (Western Pacific) countries, hope to pass a legislation this year which, if successful, will bring about a generation endgame to smoking by making it illegal for the sale of tobacco and other smoking products to anyone born after 2005,” Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin told the 150th session of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) executive board meeting in Geneva yesterday.

Earlier this month, Khairy had already hinted at a new Tobacco and Smoking Control Act in his 2022 New Year message to the Ministry of Health. He said that he wants to “ensure that there comes a time when the new generations in this country will no longer know what a cigarette is”.

“For too long, our health care system has been burdened with health care issues resulting from smoking. This allocation will enable smoking to be phased out in stages until one day in the future, Malaysia will be a smoke-free country,” he said.

If Parliament approves this tobacco prohibition, the government would have less than a year to come up with a mechanism to make sure that cigarettes are not sold to 18-year-old adults in 2023. But if it’s going to be anything like the beginning of the smoking ban at eateries, they’d need to step it up. When a Ministry’s WhatsApp number was introduced for the public to report cases of smokers that violate the ban, the replies were non-existent and it didn’t seem like it was even worth it to report. If the new Act is passed, stores would also probably be required to perform ID checks on buyers for cigarettes and tobacco products.

According to CodeBlue, more than 27,200 smoking-related deaths in Malaysia are reported annually. About one in five adults aged 15 years and older in Malaysia smoke, with an estimated 4.9 million current smokers. Smoking is also apparently a predominantly male problem in Malaysia, as about two in five men in the country are smokers.

Malaysia isn’t the first country to plan the ban of tobacco for the future generations—as New Zealand reportedly plans to ban the sale of tobacco to people born after 2008. The new law will also reduce the number of shops that can sell tobacco from 2024, and allow only smoked tobacco products containing very low levels of nicotine to be sold from 2025.

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