MPOWER approach to tobacco control

STOP SMOKING..The Tak Nak badge smoking cessation provided by the Ministry of Health Malaysia at anti-smoking clinic in Penang Hospital.The Stars photographer Zhafaran Nasib took this zooming images technique with Canon EOS 7D manual shutter speed settings at 1/30 seconds with an aperture of f2.8 on ISO 800.(For Photo Tips - Metro North Backpage)

LAST month, it was reported that the Health Ministry planned to increase tobacco tax, which would lead to a price hike for cigarettes (from RM17 to RM21.50 per pack). Nevertheless, the move was halted when the Government announced less than two weeks later that there was no immediate plan to increase tobacco tax.

One reason given for this about-turn was the concern that smokers would switch to cheaper illegal cigarettes, which pose greater risks to health. Another was that there is no tight correlation between smoking cessation and cigarette price hike in Malaysia. In fact, data from the Health Ministry’s reports during the period 2011 to 2015 were used to show that the number of smokers increased from 4.75 million to five million when there was a 30% cigarette price increase during the same period.