SMOKING (CONTROL OF ADVERTISEMENTS AND SALE OF TOBACCO) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

The Minister for Health (Mr Yeo Cheow Tong): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Smoking harms the health of not only smokers, but also non-smokers who breathe in side-stream cigarette smoke. It causes diseases such as lung cancer, coronary heart diseases and chronic lung diseases. My Ministry estimates that cigarette smoking contributed to the deaths of more than 2,800 Singaporeans in 1991.

Recognising the dangers of smoking, the Government introduced measures in 1970 to inform the public of the harmful effects of smoking and to encourage smokers to give up this undesirable habit. These measures included public education on the dangers of smoking, legislation to prohibit smoking in certain places, and heavier taxes on tobacco products in order to discourage as well as reduce smoking.

In 1986, we strengthened our efforts by launching a multi-pronged National Smoking Control Programme. One of the key objectives in this programme is to reach out to younger Singaporeans and encourage them not to become smokers.

Sir, these measures over the years have helped to create a social climate in Singapore that discourages smoking. They have resulted in Singapore having one of the lowest rates of smoking in the world. Our smoking rate declined from about 23% in 1977, to a low of 14% in 1987. However, it has been increasing since then, rising to 17% in 1991, and 18% in 1992. This overall figure, however, hides the fact that the rate for male smokers is 33%, compared to only 3% for females.

Analysis of the data also shows that the increase in smoking rate has not been uniform across the various age groups. In fact, there are fewer older Singaporeans who are now smoking. Today, only 17% of those between 40 and 64 years of age smoke, compared to 27% in 1984.

What is alarming is that the decline in the number and rate of older smokers has been more than offset by the rise in the number and rate of younger smokers. Smoking rates among those aged 18-19 have tripled from 5% in 1987 to 15% in 1991, while that for those aged 20-29 also rose from 15% to 19% in the same period.

Sir, about half of all the present smokers took up the habit before the age of 18 years. We therefore clearly need further measures to prevent those below 18 from being enticed into the smoking habit. At this tender young age, they are easily impressionable and are less able to resist peer pressure encouraging them to smoke.

Surveys show that many smokers are aware of the harmful effects of smoking. However, some take up smoking as they think it makes them look more sophisticated. Also, as the adverse effects will only show up very much later, many feel that there is no need to worry about the ill effects of smoking today. Unfortunately, they do not appreciate that the damage to their health is irreversible. When the actual illness is manifested, it may be too late for them to do anything. They will then be a burden to not only themselves and their loved ones, but also to society as a whole.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: "As a responsible society, should we continue to allow Singaporeans of a tender age to be enticed into smoking, to knowingly or unwittingly do themselves harm?".

This question has been the topic of much public discussion in recent months. Many members of the public, parents, civic and grassroots organisations, the medical and related professional organisations have all come out in favour of a ban on smoking in public places by persons below 18, as well as a ban on the sale of tobacco products to them.

The stricter legislative measures we are considering today will reduce access to tobacco products by young persons below the age of 18. At the same time, my Ministry will strengthen the public health education programme and other measures to persuade existing smokers to give up their habit, as well as to encourage non-smokers to remain so. With fewer smokers in the coming years, Singaporeans, the majority of whom are non-smokers, would be able to enjoy a cleaner and healthier environment.

Sir, let me now give Members some background information on the Bill.

My Ministry presently administers three pieces of legislation relating to smoking. These are:

(a) the Smoking (Prohibition on Advertisements) Act which controls cigarette advertisements.

(b) the Consumer Protection (Labelling of Tobacco Product Containers) Regulations which spell out the health warning requirements; and

(c) the Poisons (Amendment) (No. 2) Rules 1989, which control the tar and nicotine limits of cigarettes.

In preparing this Bill, we took the opportunity to merge these three pieces of legislation with the proposed new provisions to reduce access to tobacco products by the young. The result is a comprehensive piece of legislation governing the sale of tobacco products.

I will now touch on the major new provisions in the Bill.

Clause 10 of the Bill prohibits the sale or giving of any tobacco product to persons below the age of 18. There are now 22 other countries, including the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, which have similar legislations, with the age limit varying generally from 16 to 19 years.

Clause 11 prohibits any person below the age of 18 years from smoking, chewing, buying or possessing any tobacco product in a public place. The penalty for this offence is a fine of not more than $50 for the first conviction and $100 in the case of subsequent convictions.

Sir, with the passing of this Bill, my Ministry will embark on an intensive publicity and public education programme to inform Singaporeans about its new provisions. We plan to bring the Act into operation in late May, to coincide with this year's "Smoke Free Week".

My Ministry will allow a grace period of three months for youth under 18 caught smoking in public places. After that, we will continue to counsel those caught infringing the provisions in clause 11, especially first-time offenders. We will also inform their schools and parents for further counselling to be carried out. I am indeed glad that the Ministry of Education has agreed that the schools will also participate in this counselling programme.

Clause 13 prohibits the sale of tobacco products through vending machines. This ensures that cigarettes will not be easily available to young Singaporeans.

Clause 14 prohibits the sale of smokeless tobacco products. In recent years, the number of smokers in the USA and Europe has declined. To counter this trend, some cigarette manufacturers have introduced new forms of smokeless tobacco and tobacco substitutes targeted mainly at the young. These tobacco substitutes are items with a non-tobacco base but which contain nicotine which is highly addictive. In the USA and Sweden, such products are already being actively promoted to teenagers. We can expect this to also occur in Singapore in the future, unless we institute preventive measures now.

In fact, the World Health Organisation is also concerned with this new approach taken by tobacco companies. The WHO has therefore recommended banning the manufacture, import and sale of smokeless tobacco products. Several countries, for example, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland and Israel have already banned the import and sale of smokeless tobacco products.

Clause 15 prohibits the sale of imitation tobacco products. These are now available in the form of toys or confectionery products. Such imitation tobacco items give the young the impression that smoking is fun and enjoyable, and encourages them to give smoking a try when they are older.

Clause 17 empowers my Ministry to introduce regulations to license cigarette retailers. Sir, we do not intend to introduce such regulations for the time being. My Ministry will closely monitor the compliance with the new provisions, and will only introduce such regulations if the need arises.

Sir, we need to arrest the recent upward trend in the rate of smoking. The main increase has been amongst younger Singaporeans, many of whom take up smoking even before the age of 18. The provisions in this Bill will allow us to make it more difficult for those below 18 to gain access to tobacco products, and deter them from taking up this very harmful habit.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question proposed.

Mr Loh Meng See: Mr Speaker, Sir, despite the many years of rigorous effort in anti-smoking measures, we have heard from the Minister that more people are actually smoking. The increase is most alarming among the young smokers. The number of regular smokers aged between 15 and 19 had more than doubled from 2.9% in 1987 to 6.7% in 1991. There is also an increasing number of young women who have taken up this smoking habit.

What it meant to us is that if we ever have a winning chance in this battle against smoking, we have to concentrate on helping our young to resist ever starting this addictive habit. Notwithstanding that we have the legislation, Sir, parents and adults do have an active role to play in this drive against smoking. Personal counselling of the young individuals, reinforced by widespread publicity, can render our campaign more effective in convincing the young minds not to smoke. We have just now heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence telling us that many of the smokers actually start very young, some as young as from the age of 12 to 13 years old, and they start their first puff out of curiosity and peer pressure.

Unfortunately for many, once started on smoking, the nicotine addiction leads them to become regular smokers. In the long run, they will suffer higher health risks associated with smoking-related diseases of lung cancer, heart disease and chronic bronchitis.

Sir, I must admit that I had the earlier hesitation in determining whether it was right and prudent to ban smoking completely for those under 18 years old. There appears to be a contradiction. If smoking is that bad, it should be banned for all, irrespective of ages. Why still provide the choice to take the puff on reaching 18 years old? How do you explain to the young that they cannot do what the adults can?

But then, we should not emphasise on the ban but the ultimate objective and the spirit in which the stance is taken. We have the interests of the young at heart and for their long term good, we want to prevent them from taking up the smoking habit. As for the existing adult smokers, I am very sure that for many of them they have wished that they have never started smoking in the first place and kicking the habit now is so hard even when they have to do so out of necessity for their own health.

When we look at the proportion of smokers in our population, there are actually more non-smokers. There is growing evidence of the harmful effects of breathing in other people's smoke. Non-smokers who are continuously exposed to tobacco smoke suffer the same danger to their health as smokers. Therefore, non-smokers can cry foul against smokers who smoke in their presence. It is time for non-smokers who are the majority to assert their right against the smokers.

Private organisations have been slow in making their offices and workplaces smoke-free, and only about half of them have some form of smoking control measures. The Government offices have been declared smoke-free since 1986. I hope that both the employers and employees can act together to provide a smoke-free environment in their workplaces.

At the national level, medical expenditure on tobacco-related illnesses places a heavy burden on the economy, not counting the unnecessary waste to human lives. It is better and more cost-effective for us to act early in our strive to be a nation of non-smokers.

Sir, I would like to make some comments on some of the clauses of the Bill and to seek clarification from the Minister.

In clause 6, there is mention about the possession of 10 copies of a publication. I would like the Minister to clarify whether a person would be committing an offence if he accumulates the monthly subscriptions of a journal up to a year, in other words, he is in possession of 12 issues of the journal for the year.

There appears to be some discrepancy in the standards that we apply for those publications inside and outside Singapore. Is there not anything that we can do to close this gap? In other words, try not to make it too hard on those publications within Singapore and whether some influence can be made against those external publications.

Sir, in clause 10 (1)(c), it saddens me that there is this provision about people who give or furnish cigarettes or tobacco to the young. It is a sad reflection that some adults do such things in offering cigarettes to the young and that it has to be reflected in this Bill. But I suppose that is a fact and it is happening, and we want to ensure that the adults do not give tobacco freely to the young.

In clause 11(3), I wish the Minister to clarify whether public parks and recreational areas are included in the definition of "public place", because buildings and premises are mentioned and public parks and recreational areas are where the young gather often.

Finally, Sir, under clause 17, the existing vendors are quite concerned about this question of licensing, though the Minister has said that he may not wish to have these regulations. But there is a concern whether he will control the number of licences, and how the existing vendors will be affected by this clause.

Sir, I support the Bill.

Dr Kanwaljit Soin: Mr Speaker, Sir, one of the main objectives of this Bill is to discourage and control smoking in young people below the age of 18 years. We have heard that this is a very laudable social objective as we all know the health hazards of smoking and the potential of addiction.

However, if you look at clause 11(1), the penalties spelt out for possession of cigarettes or for smoking by young persons are woefully inappropriate and will prove to be ineffective. Many young people under 18 years of age are not in the labour force and are financially dependent on their parents. As a result of this, two scenarios may occur. If the young person comes from a wealthy family, and if he or she has access to a lot of money, then a fine of up to $50 or $100 is "no big deal", if I may express it in the jargon of the young. If the young person comes from a poor family and cannot pay the fine himself or herself, then the parents will have to pay even if they have financial difficulties, as they will not want their child to serve a sentence of imprisonment in default.

So, therefore, who are we trying to punish? The young offenders or their parents? Hence, if we wish to stop the habit of smoking in our youth, then the penalty provided must be meaningfully directed at the offenders. And here I think we should think of instituting community orders. These could be prescribed in the form of an attendance centre order.

By an attendance centre, I mean a place at which the young offenders are required to attend and be given appropriate instruction. The offender has to go to the centre for between six and twelve two or three-hour sessions on Saturdays or at any other time that does not interfere with school or work. Some police officers are already running boys' clubs in HDB estates, and this mechanism could be expanded and modified to be used for attendance centre orders. The attendance centre order is both deterrent and reformative in aim. The deterrent aspect arises from being punished by having the offenders' normal Saturday leisure activities interfered with. Also, attendance at an attendance centre should benefit the offender by bringing him under the influence of representatives of the authority of the State and teaching him something of the constructive use of leisure. Counselling, especially on health hazards of smoking, firm discipline, periods of strenuous physical training and constructive hobbies can be programmes at the attendance centre. This type of community order will be much more effective than a fine of $50 to $100 to teach our young to smoke.

With that, I support the Bill.

Mr Yeo Cheow Tong: Sir, first I would like to thank my two Parliamentary colleagues for their support of the Bill.

Sir, Mr Loh Meng See has asked a few questions. His first question is on clause 6 and he wants to know if a person accumulates some magazine or journal for a period of a year and, therefore, he has more than ten copies, will he fall foul of the law and be deemed to have committed an offence. Sir, clause 6 should be read as having accumulated 10 or more copies of the same journal. So if he has accumulated 12 copies of different months' journals, he has not fallen foul of the clause.

Sir, the intention of this clause is to allow us to prevent persons from, firstly, producing cigarette posters and, secondly, putting them up in the quiet of the night. What happened was that whilst we had a ban on the advertisement of cigarettes in the past, Members would recall having seen many posters being put up on construction hoardings by the roadside. It was not possible for us to stop this because we had to catch the culprits in the act of putting up those posters, which is extremely difficult. With this provision, whereby we prevent people from not only just printing but also having possession of more than 10 copies of those posters or advertisements, we have effectively solved the problem. And that is why over the past few years, we have not had any posters being put up on hoardings at all.

He also asked, under clause 7, whether we would also impose similar restrictions on publications which are printed externally. Sir, we have already implemented that. Publications which have more than a circulation of 10,000 copies a month are now subject to a ban on cigarette advertisement. We are now looking into reducing that threshold quantity to 5,000, and are now in the process of looking into the implications.

Mr Loh also asked, under clause 11(3), whether public parks and recreational places are included under "public place". Sir, the clause reads:

'"public place' means the premises of a school within the meaning of the Education Act or any place, premises or building or part thereof ...".'. So under the definition of "public place", parks and recreational areas are also included.

He has also asked about the licensing of tobacco retailers, ie, firstly, whether we will control the number of licences that will be issued and, secondly, how will the existing vendors be affected. Sir, as I explained in my Second Reading speech, we do not intend to implement this provision for the time being and we will only do it if required. The circumstances under which we will put this clause into operation will be if we find that the retailers are not observing the ban and they are blatantly flouting the ban because the chances of getting caught may actually be very slim. If that is the case, then we will resort to licensing of all the existing retailers. Any new retailer that opens up for business will be issued a licence quite freely. This will allow us to have a further deterrent for the retailers to ensure that they are actually complying with this new Bill.

Dr Soin has said that the $50 fine is not appropriate because the sum is either too small to be meaningful. Sir, the question here is how do we have a penalty which allows us to impress on the young offenders that smoking is actually a very serious and damaging habit and they should not smoke. The $50 is meant to be a deterrent. But the $50 fine is not the be-all and end-all of what we intend to do. As I mentioned just now, our main focus is on counselling. For first time offenders, we will bring them in for counselling and we will also require the schools to counsel them too. We intend to bring in the parents to ensure that the parents also give us their support because they will be acting in the best interest of their children. As part of the counselling process, the attendance centre order which she has mentioned is a good idea. That can be another avenue of counselling for the offenders who have been caught. So we will look into the feasibility of implementing that.

Sir, I have answered all the questions raised.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. - [Mr Yeo Cheow Tong].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.