Fully 92 percent of Taiwanese people prefer to patronize smoke-free restaurants and work in smoke-free offices, according to a survey conducted by the Institute of Public Opinion at Shih Hsin University.
Those survey results, which polled 1,068 respondents aged 18 or older, were reviewed yesterday by civic groups who are pushing for amendments to the Tobacco Hazards Act (菸害防制法) in order to crack down on public smoking and better regulate both cigarette advertising and packaging.
The Legislative Yuan is set to review the act tomorrow.
Steve Liang (
Huang Song-lih (黃嵩立), the secretary-general of the Taiwan International Medical Alliance (TIMA), said that the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), to which Taiwan is a party, requires a comprehensive legal ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
In addition, the FCTC states that the placement of warnings on cigarette packages should be ideally 50 percent or more, and that misleading terms such as "mild" and "light" should not appear on the packages.
"Countries like South Korea have already taken the words `mild,' `light' and `lucky' off of their cigarette packages, yet we still have cigarette brand-names that mean `long life.' That is very misleading," Huang said.
Until 2008, Taiwan is in a "grace period" during which it does not have to fully comply with the FCTC's requirements, but health activists want to see progress as soon as possible.
Chou Yi-heng (
"Large advertisements can still be seen posted at convenience stores and have a negative influence on consumers," said Consumers' Foundation chairman Jason Lee (
The Homemakers' Union & Foundation president Yen Mei-chuan (
"The survey results indicate that most people want a smoke-free environment. We should support non-smoking restaurants and cafes," Yen said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching