Dr Lam Pin Min, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Health, said that raising the age limit could restrict access to cigarettes. Still, he does not believe it will be effective in cutting down smoking rates in the long term. About 14.3 percent of the population smoke, according to MOH figures.
He feels a more effective strategy will be to work towards a “tobacco free generation”, pointing to a local campaign which hopes to teach children born after the year 2000 to stay away from tobacco. Appropriate legislation to ban the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2000 will go hand in hand with this strategy.
“This approach will effectively prevent or discourage our next generation from picking up this bad habit of smoking” he said.
