Participants in a preliminary public health and social benefits committee hearing on amendments to the Tobacco Hazards Control Act (
An agreement was reached to raise the cigarette tax by NT$5 on a packet of 20 cigarettes to NT$10. The measure will increase the annual intake of the National Health Insurance Bureau by NT$6 billion (US$178 million) per year.
The recommendations will go through a second and third hearing before being passed into law.
Participants agreed that smoking would be prohibited in indoor working environments and public places, where at least three people were present.
The agreement was reached after much deliberation during which the head of the Public Health Education Center under the Bureau of Health Promotion, Yu Po-tsun (
Public places
"This will drive people to smoke in the streets, such as in Japan. There needs to be a clearer definition of what constitutes an indoor public place," Yu said, adding that such a law would be difficult to execute.
Lin Ching-li (
Benefits
"Statistics in Ireland show that smokers now smoke less upon going home," she said.
Lin added that the measure was a requirement under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), to which Taiwan is a party.
Taiwan will remain in a "grace period" until 2008, during which it does not have to fully comply with the FCTC's requirements.
Meanwhile, a motion to raise the price of cigarettes and tobacco products was rejected.
A consensus was also reached that the packaging of cigarettes and other tobacco products should not contain misleading information about the harmful effects of tobacco, such as labels that say "mild" or "light."
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
RSS