Tak Nak Campaign: Up in Smoke
posted in - Dobbs, - General |Well it’s official – the RM100 million “Tak Nak” national anti-smoking campaign has failed. Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said that there was no indication that the number of smokers had gone down since the five-year campaign was launched in February last year. The hefty sum spent on billboards was a failure and the message through the media did not reach the target group which are those below 18 years of age.
A UPM Study done of 18,000 people last year revealed that the smoking age is getting younger – among 15-year-olds, 21 per cent smoked; 16 (32.2 per cent); 17 (35.6 per cent); 18 (45.5 per cent); 19 (51.4 per cent); and 20 (49.2 per cent). Shocking statistics indeed! The main reason given for starting to smoke at such a young age was peer pressure. I personally think that smoking is a risky business but I don’t hold it against anyone if you choose to subject yourself to the risk of IHD, COAD or lung cancer as long as you are an adult (after all doctors do smoke too!) . But I think it is high time we take the problem of teenage smoking very seriously – parents and teachers especially – and nip the problem in the bud or these teenage smokers will go on to become adult smokers. Once you start it is definitely harder to quit than never to have started in the first place.
There was also a recent hoo-hah about allowing the sale of smaller cigarette packs below 20 sticks with a minimum of 14 sticks. Frankly I don’t think it will make much of a difference. If you are of the lower income group you will just make a larger pack of cigarettes last longer. As for teenage smokers (who are not supposed to be allowed to buy cigarettes in the first place btw) they can easily share between friends. For that matter, what’s so prohibitive about the cost of a 20 cigarette pack to a teenager who wears branded clothes and shoes and uses the latest hi-tech gadgets?
Fomca adviser Datuk Prof Hamdan Adnan has remarked that fear no longer works when it comes to curbing smoking. He urged the Government to work with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and look at new approaches to curb smoking and target schoolchildren, teachers, youths and smokers. Interpersonal communications approaches such as holding talks in schools should also be employed. It remains to be seen whether such approaches will work but something definitely has to be done!
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April 19th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
[...] as the “TAK NAK” campaign to curb smoking has been aa failure to me, i suppose….I take the KTM train every [...]