The New Straits Times, May 30, 1997
Four times and you're out! This sounds like a rule of a new game for schoolchildren. Only this time it can affect their future, especially when they are caught smoking in school.
This rule, announced during the launching of the 'No Smoking For Teenagers' campaign (NST, May 14) has been adopted by the Ministry of Education to curb smoking among teenagers.
As a parent, I support the Minister but I am also concerned about parents whose smoking habits only serve to encourage similar habits among their children.
Why pick on our children/ More importantly, what about the tobacco industry that is equally responsible for sustaining the smoking culture not only among teenagers but adults as well?
Does the same rule also apply to the industry - four times, and it is out too? Or are our children all alone in this?
If so, is it fair that the corrupter is let off the hook, and the corrupted penalised? To take another analogy, should a drug kingpin or a trafficker be set free, and the addict hanged?
The tobacco executives are in this case as good as the illusive kingpins in selling their wares, knowing that nicotine in cigarettes is addictive and not much different from other abusive drugs.
In fact, it was reported recently in the United States that an 'FBI task force has been created to assist a US government investigation that could send tobacco industry executives to prison'.
Others have demanded that these executives are 'criminally prosecuted', according to a study conducted on behalf of the campaign for tobacco-free children in that country.
Maybe it is not within the Ministry's powers to take action against the industry here. Even so, it must take a stand against the tobacco industry and its supporters before smoking can be banned from schools.
If the Ministry could extend its influence to other relevant agencies, there are many strategies that could be adopted to support the campaign.
Short of a total ban on advertising, as suggested by an editorial in the New Straits Times (May 21), the Ministry with help from other agencies could rule that:
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Cigarette billboards advertising should not be within a certain distance (for example, 3km) from schools;
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Retail outlets at a certain distance (for example, 1,000m) from schools should not be allowed to sell cigarettes;
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Schools should not participate in any event that is sponsored by the tobacco industry (including industry funded 'educational' activities, especially sports and infotainments),
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Industry should be made to contribute a fixed percentage of its profits to a neutral fund administered by the Ministry for a permanent anti-tobacco educational campaign in school; and
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The same ruling should apply to other educational centres, including colleges and universities.
These are just initial thoughts, but the point is the tobacco industry must be controlled as much as the schools are, so that we can arrive at a more comprehensive strategy to curb teenage smoking.
Without this, we are bound to fail and the industry will still have an upper hand (and hence its support of any unstructured activity). Worse, at the end of the day we will end up with more problems than we started off with. How is this so?
Let's take the 'cane-cane suspend-expel' formula introduced by the Ministry.
By all counts, the four 'chances' hooked on smoking is a tough criteria to meet. Most smokers must know that they need more than four chances before they can stop.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), in a document entitled Tobacco Use: A Public Disaster, said: 'Although 75-80 per cent of smokers, where this has been measured, want to quit and about one-third have made at least three serious attempts, less than half of smokers succeed in stopping permanently before the age of 60. Nicotine dependence is clearly a major barrier to successful cessation.'
Based on this statement, a majority of those who attempted to quit would fail. And more than three attempts are required, even if it is up to 60 years.
In other words, with implementation of the ruling it could almost be predicted that we would be saddled with yet another social problem, this time 'out-of-school smoking youths'.
This is because when they are expelled for smoking they will never again see any form of schooling, at least in government-funded schools, as clarified by the Deputy Minister of Education (NST, May 16).
Ironically, good basic education is crucial in combating smoking as people would be more informed about their choices. Depriving them of an opportunity would mean condemning them to the habit forever.
Moreover, expelling students after four 'chances' is tantamount to passing the buck elsewhere. Who will deal with the 'out-of-school smoking youths'? Our schools may be 'smokeless', but that does not ensure that the number of smoking teenagers, at large, will not continue to increase.
Since the industry has been shown to target youngsters to fill up its new and expanding markets, in all probability, students once expelled will be under intense pressure to continue smoking.
Certainly, the pool of potential drug addicts in this country will increase correspondingly.
This is not conjecture. The WHO says 'experts in the field of substance abuse consider tobacco dependence to be strong or stronger than dependence on such substances as heroin and cocaine'.
It is no coincidence that up to 90 per cent of drug addicts are smokers and many are dropouts or with poor educational background and unemployed.
So the 'cane-cane-suspend-expel' formula could, in a worse case scenario, unintentionally contribute to the already expanding population of incurable addicts in the country.
Like all drugs of abuse, when nicotine use is abruptly stopped (usually when one runs out of cigarettes), withdrawal symptoms begin to emerge - in the form of intense craving for the substance, restlessness, anxiety and heart palpitations.
Under the new ruling, expulsion will come soon enough for these students. But why four 'chances'?
What happened to counselling, motivational inputs, smoking cessation programmes, replacement therapies and other behavioural interventions?
How about discussing these under relevant subjects taught in schools, including Islamic studies now that the National Fatwa Council has declared smoking haram (since March 23, 1995).
Such complementary approaches are essential because studies have indicated that even when someone is using the nicotine patch, as replacement therapy in trying to quit the habit, the chances of success are a lot lower without counselling.
Now what can we expect of schoolchildren who have to do it 'cold turkey' on their own? Unless such details of a more systematic programme are explained, one feels pessimistic about the impact of the new ruling.
If the Ministry of Education still intends to enforce the ruling, then we must examine its larger implication. Otherwise it may create another problem aside from that it intends to solve. Remember, smoking has for a long time been considered a cultural norm.
It would be prudent for the Ministry to 'educate' its counterparts, such as the Ministries of Youth and Sports, Primary Industries, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, Information; and the Bahagian Hal Ehwal Agama Islam (BAHEIS) in the Prime Minister's Department, to join in its fight.
Malaysia Boleh? Sure. So let's live up to the much vaunted slogan and set the stage to overcome the smoking problem in this country.
