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“I know for a fact the vape industry has been lobbying the government to make sure there is no intergenerational ban,” he said.
“Another group that has been lobbying hard are your small coffee shop owner associations. They make commissions from the sale of cigarettes and they are a strong vote bank.
“They are usually quite prominent small businessmen in districts and these guys have a lot of sway on their elected representatives. They’ve come out even in my time to say ‘this is ill-advised, we don’t like this’.”
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was reportedly meeting with representatives from tobacco giant Phillip Morris International on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September as part of his bid to bring more foreign investors to the country.
It is not suggested such discussions factored into the revision of incoming anti-smoking measures in Malaysia.
But Jamaluddin described as “flimsy” and “without legal basis” the government’s reasoning that generational prohibition was unconstitutional and susceptible to legal challenge. A former member of UMNO, the previously all-powerful Malay party that is now a junior partner in Anwar’s ruling coalition, Jamaluddin said that question should be left to the courts to decide, not the attorney-general.
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Anwar’s office and a spokesman for Malaysian Health Minister Zaliha Mustafa were contacted for comment.
Mustafa told reporters on Tuesday a generational ban was not being abandoned altogether but had been postponed to focus on ensuring tighter regulation on vapes and other tobacco substitutes including to prevent their sale to minors.
“We have not forgotten entirely. We are pushing it aside and focusing on the priorities,” she said.
Liew Chin Tong, a deputy minister in Anwar’s government, also defended the approach.
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He referenced Australia’s introduction of plain packaging in 2012 as he talked up the strength of the controls, under which advertising and promotion of tobacco products is outlawed and which gives the health minister powers over the display of cigarette packets and labels.
“The ‘[ban] or nothing’ narrative put forward by a former health minister is a false dichotomy,” he said on Facebook.
“After decades finally there will be a dedicated and stand-alone act controlling the use of tobacco and that in itself is a major achievement in Malaysia.”
According to Malaysia’s National Health and Morbidity Survey, the smoking rate in the country was 21.3 per cent in 2019, down from 22.8 per cent in 2015. It estimated that 4.8 million Malaysians over the age of 15 were smokers, the vast majority of them men.
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