Materia Medica Malaysiana

Stop new tactics, tobacco firms told

KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry will meet players of the tobacco industry and ask them to stop some of the new tactics that they have adopted to promote cigarettes after the ban on such activities, its minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng said.

The ministry was “very aware” of the ingenious tactics used by the tobacco companies to promote their products since the Jan 1 ban on all forms of cigarette promotions, he told a press conference after launching the National Association of Malaysian Life Insurance and Financial Advisers’ nationwide blood donation campaign at the ministry yesterday.

He refused to reveal the new tactics, but hinted that they could involve “going to certain places, getting free cigarettes and seeing lovely girls.”

Asked whether such new tactics included sending attractively-dressed promotion girls to public areas to push cigarettes, he said: “This has been already been going on, but they are now even more ingenious than that.”

All forms of tobacco advertising and sponsorship, including that on brand names, travel and non-tobacco products, had been banned since Jan 1. However, the Cabinet exempted certain sports and sporting events from this ban.

Direct cigarette advertising had been banned much earlier.

On Malaysia’s signing of the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Chua said he would be presenting a memorandum on the matter to the Cabinet within the next two weeks.

He said it would be up to the Cabinet to decided when Malaysia would sign the convention.

“We have been given one year until next June to sign the convention,” he said.

Chua also said around 10,000 people in Malaysia died from tobacco-related diseases yearly.