Once the law is passed, Malaysia will become the first nation in the world to adopt tobacco generational endgame legislation.
Malaysia’s health minister, Khairy Jamaluddin, said the Cabinet approved the Tobacco and Smoking Control Bill which will prohibit the sale of cigarettes, tobacco, and vape products to anyone born after 2005. The bill will go before Parliament for debate in the upcoming session.
The "implementation of the generational endgame" provision of the bill according Khairy Jamaluddin, aims to prevent Malaysia's younger generations from taking up smoking and developing a dependence on tobacco products as they age, as well as to lower the country's smoking rate to less than 5% by 2040. He added that Malaysia will become the first nation in the world to adopt a tobacco generational endgame legislation once the law was passed.
Recent legislation in New Zealand, which announced in December 2021 a plan to phase out smoking by steadily raising the smoking age until it covers the whole population, inspired Malaysia’s bill.
Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, opposition MP and president of the Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (MUDA), Malaysia’s first youth-based party, expressed concern that the bill would harm retailers' sales, impinge on individual liberties, set off a chain reaction that would result in the outlawing of other goods like alcoholic and sugar-sweetened beverages, increase illegal trade, and harm consumers' personal freedom.
Syed Saddiq said the health minister should answer these concerns in Parliament before MUDA decides whether it will support the bill. “This issue should be debated in full and deliberated based on documented data and science,” he said, speaking to CodeBlue.
Pointing out that the health ministry’s annual budget has risen over the years despite various smoking-related regulations, Syed Saddiq said, “The entire argument of cigarettes and vape impacting our health budget doesn’t make sense since even with every imposition of strict laws and regulation, their budget keeps rising.”
Tiong King Sing, a government backbencher from Bintulu, also openly voiced his position on the tobacco law, saying he opposed banning smoking for future generations and was in favor of public education.