{"id":7097,"date":"2010-12-06T20:47:58","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T12:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/?p=7097"},"modified":"2010-12-06T20:47:58","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T12:47:58","slug":"my-10-steps-for-anti-smoking-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/borninmalaysia\/2010\/12\/06\/my-10-steps-for-anti-smoking-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"My 10 steps for anti-smoking campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was pondering on the statistics that passive smoking kills nearly 600,000 people annually around the world. Yeah, that’s just about 0.009% of the world population. But imagine in a country like Malaysia where number of smokers seem to be increasing (for both genders and also among the underaged), 0.009% of our population is about 2430 people “only” (its less than half of deaths due to road accidents last year<\/a><\/strong>, 6745).<\/p>\n

I think more drastic\/radical (well, why not call it creative!) action is needed to remove the threat of passive smoking. Among them (I was inspired while half-asleep):<\/p>\n

1. Ban smoking in all eateries, in addition to existing prohibited places.<\/p>\n

2. Ban the sale of tobacco products in all eateries, supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol stations.<\/p>\n

3. Eateries\/supermarkets\/convenience stores\/petrol stations that allow their patrons to smoke will be automatically sealed for 1 week. For long, the business owners have washed their hands of their social responsibility. Time to act.<\/p>\n

4. Item 3 above should be applied to colleges\/universities as well since quite a number of these places seem to promote smoking.<\/p>\n

5. Political parties must only nominate non-smokers as candidates for public office.<\/p>\n

5. All civil service jobs should be limited to non-smokers only. (yes, its discriminatory, but take it as affirmative action).<\/p>\n

6. Private sector organisations that promote non-smoking environment to be given tax deduction, whereas those that don’t are to pay a “sin tax” of 10% which goes towards their employees health fund.<\/p>\n

7. Smokers to pay 3 times more the price of their insurance premium. I base this on the assumption that a family consist of 4 members (as per Malaysian household income calculation) and the one smoker causes passive smoking for the other 3 family members. So, its only logical that the smoker takes extra insurance to protect other family members.<\/p>\n

8. Sellers and buyers of contraband cigarettes to face mandatory jail sentence.<\/p>\n

9. Artistes, sports figures, and other public figures which promote smoking or endorse products related to smoking should be reprimanded by their respective authorities\/industry.<\/p>\n

10. Educate public not to visit\/engage\/patronise places that allow smoking, wherever possible. There must be a boycott movement to slowly eradicate such places.<\/p>\n

Of course, many of the steps above involves enforcement, surveillance and punishment, something that is sorely lacking at the moment. That’s why public must play a role by: staying away from smoking areas, limit patronising shops that sell cigarettes, and so on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was pondering on the statistics that passive smoking kills nearly 600,000 people annually around the world. Yeah, that’s just about 0.009% of the world population. But imagine in a country like Malaysia where number of smokers seem to be increasing (for both genders and also among the underaged), 0.009% of our population is about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[117],"class_list":["post-7097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borninmalaysia","tag-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7098,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7097\/revisions\/7098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}