Govt studying new ways to curb number of smokers

PETALING JAYA: The government is studying new ways to cut the number of smokers in the country including implementing a licence requirement for selling cigarettes.
Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam said the proposal is among the ministry's "soft" initiatives to discourage smokers from continuing their habit.
"We also have soft policies (to discourage smoking). We are expanding non-smoking areas every year by gazetting more and more spaces. We have other initiatives in the working, like introducing plain packaging or cigarette licences," Subramaniam said at the launch of the Smoke Free Workforce programme, which is a collaboration effort between Sunway Group, AIA Berhad, AirAsia, and Johnson & Johnson, today.
He said plain packaging will eliminate branding and make cigarettes less alluring to smokers or would-be smokers while tobacco selling licences will limit sales.
However, Subramaniam said, such proposals are still in the early stages and the Ministry is gathering feedback from all stakeholders.
"We have gone through this with coffee shop owners through associations but some owners told us that they make more money from cigarette sales than they do from food, so this is difficult," he said.
Subramaniam added that changing people's behaviour is the real challenge as people are aware of how harmful cigarettes are but continue to smoke anyway.
The four companies pledged to make their workforce smoke-free by helping smokers within the organisations to ditch the habit through assistance programmes.
Johnson & Johnson Malaysia managing director Chin Keat Chyuan, Sunway Group chairman Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah, himself a former smoker, and AIA chief executive Anusha Thavarajah also attended the launch.