Warning labels on cigarette packaging are too small and not “frightening” enough to be effective, academics said at a forum in Taipei on Monday.
The difference in the number of people who smoke in Taiwan (3 million) compared with Hong Kong (640,000) might be due to the difference in the sizes of warning labels on packaging, they said at the Tobacco Hazard and Prevention Forum for Cross-strait Locations, Hong Kong and Macau.
Warning labels in Taiwan only comprise 35 percent of packaging and are “a light reminder,” academics said.
Photo courtesy of the John Tung Foundation
The Hong Kong government stipulates that warning labels and pictures take up 85 percent of the packaging, with pictures of long-time smokers and the effects of smoking on the body, as well as warning labels, such as: “Smoking causes strokes” or “Smoking kills.”
Surveys have shown that the majority of Hong Kongers support the legislation, University of Hong Kong professor Lam Tai-hing (林大慶) said.
The pictures are thought to scare many young people off smoking, Lam said.
In Taiwan, government statistics last year showed that 15.3 percent of adults smoke, while young people who use e-cigarettes have doubled since 2015.
E-cigarettes were used by 3.7 percent of junior-high school students, compared with 2 percent in 2015, while their use among senior-high school students was 4.8 percent, compared with 2.1 percent in 2015, the statistics showed.
The Health Promotion Administration said it was aware of the statistics and amendments to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法) have been sent to the Executive Yuan.
The amendments would increase the size of warning labels on cigarette packaging to 85 percent and would hike fines for illegal distribution of e-cigarettes in a bid to deter sales and distribution, the agency said.
Fines for illegal manufacturing or importing of e-cigarettes would be increased from NT$10,000 to NT$50,000 to NT$50,000 to NT$250,000, it said.
Illegal sales would be fined NT$10,000 to NT$50,000, up from NT$1,000 to NT$3,000, it said.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare said it would convene a panel to discuss the kinds of pictures that would be a deterrent to smoking.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS