Parents who give cigarettes to their children are not only breaking the law, but are also torturing their children and should be heavily penalized, the John Tung Foundation said yesterday.
The foundation also publicized videos in which parents or other adults were seen providing cigarettes to children and babies and laughing as they smoked or coughed after inhaling the smoke.
Photos and videos of young children smoking cigarettes have been posted on the Internet recently.
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Lin Ching-li (林清麗), head of the foundation’s Tobacco Hazard Prevention Section, said that in the past four days, the foundation had received more than 20 complaints concerning videos posted by adults who let children smoke cigarettes.
Many of the videos are posted on Internet video sites and popular blog sites and can be found under categories such as “family entertainment” or “learning and growing,” she said.
The foundation said such parenting behavior was irresponsible and was no different from people who record themselves torturing animals and post the video on Web sites.
Parents who allow or even force their children to smoke cigarettes are damaging their children’s health and skewing their children’s behavior, it said.
The foundation said studies showed that the younger a person starts smoking, the more difficult it will be for that person to quit the habit.
People who start smoking before they are 15 years of age are also eight times more likely to develop lung cancer, the foundation said.
“Parents should realize that they are responsible for their children’s welfare,” Sun Yue (孫越), a celebrity who is now a volunteer at the foundation, said. “Parents should not find entertainment or happiness at the expense of their children’s health.”
The foundation said adults who provide tobacco to children were in violation of the Children and Youth Welfare Act (兒童及少年福利法), an offense punishable by a fine of between NT$10,000 and NT$50,000.
DOING ENOUGH? The HPA budgets NT$1.3 billion to prevent the health hazards of tobacco, but has no separate budget to fight teen drinking, a doctor said The government should step up alcohol education and prevention efforts, and allocate more of the budget to it, doctors said on Friday, citing the high consumption of alcohol among Taiwanese adolescents. One out of four 12-to-17-year-olds has consumed alcohol, said Yen Tsung-hai (顏宗海), director of Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Department of Clinical Toxicology. The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) budgets NT$1.3 billion (US$43.9 million) annually to prevent the health hazards of tobacco, but it has not allocated a separate budget for preventing teenage drinking or excessive alcohol use, Yen said. “There is no so-called ‘safe drinking level’ for minors,” because any amount consumed
The Fancy Frontier manga and anime expo held in Taipei over the weekend has sparked controversy, after a participant allegedly contravened the Act on Offenses Against Sexual Morality (妨害風化罪) by publicly exposing her private parts during a photo shoot. The two-day event opened at the Expo Dome at the Taipei Expo Park on Saturday, attracting numerous comic and anime creators, cosplayers, photographers and fans. Allegedly, a female cosplayer who was not wearing any underwear lifted up her skirt and revealed her private parts at an outdoor photography area near the venue. Event organizers said yesterday that to prevent indecent exposure, they have since
YOUNGEST PATIENT: Cases of botulism have been only sporadically reported over the past few years, with two in 2015, six in 2016 and none in the past three years The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the nation’s first case of infant botulism this year, a four-month-old boy in northern Taiwan, as well as five new cases of Japanese encephalitis confirmed last week. The boy was introduced to homemade solid food in the middle of last month, but began to experience constipation and loss of appetite on June 23, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said, adding that he was taken to the hospital when he developed a fever and shortness of breath on June 25. In the hospital, the boy also experienced a rapid heartbeat, limb
The National Taiwan Museum’s Railway Department Park in Taipei is to open to the public today. The park in Datong District (大同) near the North Gate (北門, Beimen) is one of the museum’s four branches. During the Japanese colonial era, the site housed the railway department of the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan’s Bureau of Transportation. After World War II, it served as the headquarters for the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) for several decades. In 2007, it was listed as a national monument under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法). At an opening ceremony yesterday, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung
RSS