Getting fit and staying healthy is generally never a popular pastime. And for Malaysians, who are partial to a good life of excesses, changing a habit is a glacial endeavour.
Consider how long it has taken to get Malaysians accustomed to ordering teh tarik "kurang manis", which became trendy only because the advice was to reduce sweetness, not do without the favourite hot beverage completely.
Generally, this phasing out approach has worked quite well. Soft drinks used to be a lot sweeter, until the government made manufacturers reduce their sugar composition.
Now, Malaysian consumers don't even notice it. No doubt the same is hoped for with the health minister's proposed ban on the sale of cigarettes to adults born in 2005 and after.
If the law is passed, optimistically, access to tobacco products will be phased out completely as the younger generation ages. If this law comes into being, Malaysia will be only the third country in the world to attempt such a thing, after Bhutan, which has banned the sale of all tobacco products, and New Zealand, which from next year will make smoking illegal to those born after 2004. With 27,200 Malaysian lives lost to tobacco-caused diseases every year, this is something we need to get right.
The question, of course, is: How will such a law be enforced? Since 1994, the law has prohibited the sale of tobacco products to minors. Yet, as many underaged teenage boys will attest to, getting hold of cigarettes is easy when there are adults willing to help and corrupt. And even then, how closely, if at all, do cashiers check the identity cards of buyers?
National health and morbidity surveys count tens of thousands of children aged 10 to 14 already in the habit, and includes 15-year-olds as "adult" smokers in their statistics. If only the sale and purchase is banned, is there anything to stop a child from picking up the habit, then continuing with it as a young adult? In New Zealand's plans, it is the smoking that is made illegal, and the country plans to increase the smoking age every year in perpetuity, so that eventually, smoking will be completely phased out.
If Malaysia really wants to phase out smoking, it needs to be clearer and firmer in its methods and not leave such loopholes. Malaysians are experts at finding loopholes, and poor or absent enforcement add to making a mockery of well-intended laws.
With the six biggest tobacco companies raking in hundreds of billions of US dollars in profits annually, the minister will have his work cut out for him in resisting the push from the tobacco lobby, as well as from colleagues who may be thinking more of how much Malaysia makes from tobacco taxes than it loses from sick and dying citizens.
The minister must push harder and convince his colleagues to side with health, which is the true wealth. According to the National Health and Morbidity Survey 2019, approximately 21.3 per cent of the population, or 4.8 million Malaysians, are smokers. Each of these smokers infects others around them — at home, at work and in other public places — with second-hand smoke, which worldwide accounts for about 10 per cent of tobacco-caused deaths. And for what? For an addiction that most smokers regret but cannot kick. It's high time for an intervention.