KUALA LUMPUR – The Dewan Rakyat has passed the Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Bill 2023 today, following heated debate by MPs from both side of the political divide over the exclusion of the generational endgame (GEG) provision.
Speaker Tan Sri Johari Abdul called for a voice vote after Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa completed her winding up speech and answers to MPs’ queries on the bill.
MPs passed the bill by a majority voice vote, but not before a contentious debate over the last two days that saw government backbenchers also speaking strongly against the exclusion of the GEG provision, which would have imposed a lifetime ban on smoking on anyone born on January 1, 2007 and after.
Even with the GEG component decoupled from the bill, it is still Malaysia’s first standalone bill to regulate smoking, which prior to this came under the Food Act 1983, via tobacco control regulations introduced in 2004.
Those regulations also did not cover vape and e-cigarettes, which although not specifically named in the new law, are covered in definitions on smoking products in the bill’s interpretation section.
In her winding up speech, Zaliha reiterated the urgency to pass the bill to address the loophole which had left vapes and nicotine unregulated, following the government’s move to take nicotine off the poisons control list to collect excise duty.
She also stressed the importance of passing a bill that would not face legal challenges down the road, following the Attorney-General Chambers’ view that the GEG provision was unconstitutional with regards to equality of all persons before the law.
Additionally, she stressed the need for the bill as a means to reduce future government spending on treating non-communicable diseases arising caused by smoking complications
The cost of treatment, at a projected RM8.77 billion in 2030, will be far higher than the RM500 million a year that the government aims to collect in duties on vape, for example.
With the bill passed, the Dewan Rakyat also today passed amendments to the Food Act 1983 to remove the regulations on tobacco control. – November 30, 2023