Tobacco generational bans may make experiences such as smoking something from a long distant past for future generations.
New Zealand’s and Malaysia’s generational bans ultimately lead to complete tobacco control and prohibition; and might serve as a blueprint for other countries to follow suit.
Allow me to open this opinion piece with a wholesomely fictional – yet conceivable – scene.
A Saturday evening after dinner. The young family has settled down in the living room, watching an entertainment program on TV. While the parents enjoy a bottle of red wine together, their 8-year-old son – let’s call him Billy – sips a soda.
Billy: “Can I try some wine, dad?”
Dad: “Nope. You’re too young for that.”
Billy: “How about when I grow up, dad? Can I have some wine then?”
Dad: “Nope. You will never be able to drink wine.”
Billy: “Never? Why not, dad?”
Dad: “Because you were born too late and cannot buy any.”
Billy: “But once I turn 18, I surely can. Right, dad?”
Dad: “Nope. The government has decreed that everybody born in your year or later is barred for life from buying alcohol.”
Billy: “You mean until we die, dad?”
Dad: “Yes, until you all die.”
Billy: “It’s sooo unfair!”
Dad: “I am not making the rules, son. Oh, and you better be quick with that soda there, because in the coming year the government also will ban people like you from ever enjoying sweetened drinks. Or ice cream. Or candies, chocolate, cookies. Everything that has too much sugar in it.”
Billy just sits there, consternated. Taking a long, sad look at his soda bottle, he pushes it away across the table.
Dad: “What’s the matter, Billy?”
Billy: “Well, if I can’t have a soda from next year, I better quit right now.”
Unfortunately, what seems part of an absurd screenplay set in an authoritarian nanny state future is not too far from reality. It’s already happening… well, not to alcohol or sugary foods but to the declared “enemy no.1” of governments around the globe: tobacco. The first country to enact what has since been dubbed the “generational tobacco ban” is New Zealand, a nation normally known for its open-mindedness and liberal society. Not in this case, though.
In December 2022, New Zealand’s parliament voted in favor of introducing a strict new tobacco law. In effect since January 1, 2023, it prohibits any person born on or after January 1, 2009, from purchasing conventional tobacco products for life, most notably cigarettes. Simultaneously, New Zealand announced it would downscale the number of new tobacco product sales licenses, presumably to make it more difficult to locate a store. Interestingly, vaping is not covered in the bill. But then again, that is hardly surprising given the fact that e-smoking enjoys growing popularity among the country’s younger generations. Only a tiny percentage of Kiwi teenagers actually smoke combustible tobacco products.
But where New Zealand’s vaping enthusiasts of any age bracket are safe for the time being, their fellow users in Malaysia aren’t so lucky. Malaysia’s former public health minister Khairy Jamaluddin’s in January 2022 tabled a draft for the country’s new “Control of Tobacco Products and Smoking Bill”. An omnibus law for total tobacco control, it included provisions for what was officially labeled as “Generation End Game” (GEG). Unlike New Zealand’s law, which only bars citizens of a certain birth year onward from purchasing conventional tobacco products, the Malaysian version is considerably stricter.
Firstly, the GEG provisions bar anyone born January 1, 2007 and later not only from buying but also from using smoking products. Secondly, the proposed law is not restricted to combustibles alone but incorporates vaping and heated tobacco products (HTPs) as well!
The inclusion of vape products appears particularly curious under the light that Malaysia only in 2022 finally got around to regulating its burgeoning vaping industry. Prior to that, the sector had operated in a gray market environment for well over a decade, being merely tolerated by the authorities. If Malaysia ratifies its GEG bill, expected to occur sometime this year, the recent vape market regulation becomes entirely meaningless. Once passed into law, local business owners can brace for running out of customers faster than they will be able to close down their shops, e-liquid labs, and device factories.
Both New Zealand and Malaysia pursue two distinct objectives with their respective bills. The obvious one is to lower smoking rates further. In New Zealand’s case, that should be easy-peasy to achieve, as the country already enjoys one of the lowest smoking rates in the world anyway, thanks to an extraordinarily health-conscious general population. Government figures from 2021/2022 show that only 8% of New Zealand adults are regular tobacco smokers, a substantial drop from the 16.4% recorded in 2011/2012. However, this also may be somewhat misleading. Just as much as regular smoking is in decline, vaping is on the steep rise, with increasing numbers of smokers, including teenagers, switching from tobacco to vape.
Tobacco use in Malaysia, meanwhile, is a different matter, as the country has one of the higher smoking rates in the world. According to government data, the smoking prevalence among adults stood at 29.5% in 2000, declining only to 21.3% in 2019. Yet nothing much moved in the male smoker demographic, which recorded only a slight decline from 49.5% in 2003 to 40.5% in 2019. And where tobacco smoking among New Zealand adolescents is practically nil, the proportion of smokers among Malaysian teenagers still was at a quite high 13.8% in 2019.
That brings us to the more covert, second objective, though the Malaysia-coined moniker “Generation End Game” gives a very strong hint. Also, both governments don’t hold back when interviewed about what that second objective is: the eventual total elimination of tobacco use among their populations. The older generations of smokers currently are still around. However, they are going to gradually disappear, leaving behind only generations that are barred from buying tobacco products (or, in Malaysia’s cases even using them). Accordingly, it will no longer make commercial sense for local businesses to manufacture, import, or sell such items. It’s a sneaky trick alright, but one that unfortunately also assaults two of the cornerstones of liberal democracy, human rights, and freedom of choice. Or as little Billy would put it: “It’s sooo unfair!”
Yet… are such totalitarian measures really necessary – and moral – in modern 22nd century nations? After all, past tobacco control initiatives have proved that it is possible to lower smoking rates through more organic, natural, gentle ways rather than by force. Historically, blunt prohibitions have rarely worked. If anything, all they did was unwittingly create an underground market. That may not be much of an issue in New Zealand, but Malaysia already has to deal with a serious illicit tobacco problem even without its GEG law. Depending on which sources one would like to believe, between 60% and 70% of the country’s total tobacco market is currently made up of illicit product! That is not going to vanish just because certain generations will be barred from legally buying tobacco – or smoking it in public. It is going to stay, if not become worse. Ban a product and certain consumer groups will surely crave it even more.
But let’s suppose that deep concern for peoples’ health and wellbeing truly is the sole driver behind these generational bans. Then, a more than justified question would arise: Where are New Zealand’s and Malaysia’s generational bans regarding sugar, alcohol, caffeine, or processed foods laden with trans-fats, phosphates, salt, nitrates, nitrosamines, and hormones? There are none. The one and only product that appears to warrant a generational ban is “enemy no.1”, tobacco.
And that easily leads to a cynical yet honest observation. It seems perfectly acceptable if tens if not hundreds of thousands of people succumb to diabetes, arteriosclerosis, liver cirrhosis, heart attacks, edemas, colon and other cancers, renal failure, strokes, and a plethora of other ailments and diseases… as long as they don’t die from tobacco use.