PETALING JAYA: The government’s plan to prohibit the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products to people born after 2005 will also include vape and e-cigarettes.
The health ministry confirmed that the ban will cover “tobacco products, smoking substances, substitute tobacco products and smoking devices”.
Yesterday, health minister Khairy Jamaluddin told the 150th session of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) executive board meeting in Geneva that Malaysia hoped to pass legislation this year that would bring about a “generation end-game to smoking”.
“This is by making it illegal for the sale of tobacco and other smoking products to anyone born after 2005,” he said, adding that he believed it would help prevent and control non-communicable diseases (NCD), such as heart disease and hypertension.
According to Malaysia’s 2020 report to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, one in five (21.3%) people aged 15 years and older in the country are smokers.
Khairy’s announcement comes a week after he said the government plans to table a Tobacco and Smoking Control Act in the next session of the Dewan Rakyat.
In November, the finance ministry confirmed that a bill on the regulation of tobacco, e-cigarettes, vape and shisha could be tabled in the first Dewan Rakyat session of 2022, though it was supposed to be brought to Parliament in 2020.
The ministry said the bill will pave the way for comprehensive regulation of conventional tobacco products and new smoking products like vape that attract younger smokers.
Putrajaya also plans to impose an excise duty of RM1.20 per millilitre of vape liquids in 2022 to regulate the industry, on top of the 10% duty on all electronic cigarettes and other smoking devices, including vapes, introduced last year.