With only two weeks until the new Tobacco Hazard Prevention and Control Act (菸害防治法) takes effect, civic groups yesterday urged shop owners who sell cigarettes to make sure that their display areas comply with the new law.
The new regulations, effective on Jan. 11, not only prohibit smoking in public spaces, but also stipulate that owners of establishments that sell cigarettes, including convenience stores, supermarkets, restaurants and betel nut stands, may not actively market or display tobacco-related ads.
The regulations will also apply to airplanes and duty-free shops at airports.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
“Under the new rules, any place that sells cigarettes is limited to ‘letting the customer know the cigarette brand and price.’ Any action beyond this limitation is considered a violation,” said Yau Sea-wain (姚思遠), president of the John Tung Foundation.
Yau listed several examples of practices by store owners that will become illegal once the law takes effect, including cigarette ads in the form of posters, lighted panel displays, loudspeaker announcements, electronic billboards, storefront displays, point-of-sale displays and placing cigarette products within easy reach of customers.
Violators will be subject to fines of up to NT$500,000.
Some convenience stores give gifts to customers who spend more than a certain amount, but starting on Jan. 11, cigarette purchases will not be included in such offers, Yau said.
Manufacturing, importing or selling candy or toys in the shape of cigarettes will also be prohibited, he said.
“At airports, we often hear sales clerks greet us by saying things like: ‘Duty-free cigarettes here!’ On airplanes, flight attendants ask if we need to buy cigarettes or openly display the products on a cart and put cigarette catalogues in the seat pockets for passengers to read. But all of these would violate the new act,” said Yiu Kai-hsiung (游開雄), publisher of the Consumers Foundation’s Consumer Reports of Taiwan.
Owners of betel nut stands normally display cigarettes facing outward. Under the new law, betel nut stands will have to cover up the cigarettes or face fines of up to NT$50,000, Yiu said.
To help businesses take measures to ensure they do not violate the new act, the John Tung Foundation has created several self-assessment forms, available at www.e-quit.org.
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
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
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