The Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Health Promotion Administration on Wednesday defended a ban on smoking in national parks set to take effect next year, saying that subjecting people to second-hand smoke was a violation of their basic human rights.
The administration was responding to a pro-smoking group’s accusation that restricting smokers from lighting up in national parks was unconstitutional.
Chen Shao-ting (陳紹庭), chairman of the organizing committee of the Taiwan Smoker Rights Promotion Association, said the health ministry has overstepped its legal authority by banning smoking in national parks as of April 1.
“Why not just call yourself the Garrison Command of Health and Welfare, instead of the Ministry of Health and Welfare?” Chen quipped.
Feng Tsung-yi (馮宗蟻), a section chief at the agency, said it was a matter of public interest for people to have the right to breathe fresh air and ensuring that they can is part of the government’s duty.
“If you expose the majority of the people to an environment full of secondhand smoke, that would be a violation of their basic human rights,” he said.
In addition, the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法) stipulates that smokers should be separated from non-smokers in public places, he said.
Smoking advocates and lobbyists for cigarette vendors are the ones who are violating the public interest and acting unconstitutionally, he said.
Other administration officials said the government has been trying to extend no-smoking zones to pedestrian crossings, where smokers often light up while waiting for traffic lights to change.
The agency has not made a final decision on banning smoking at pedestrian crossings because such areas fall under the jurisdiction of local governments, they 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
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