The Clean Air Alliance yesterday called on the public to join a protest in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei today against tobacco regulations that benefit cigarette manufacturers.
Police said traffic restrictions would be in place in the area.
Heated tobacco products might help reduce secondhand smoke, but they still cannot be sold legally, despite it being a full year since the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法) was amended, while 14 new types of traditional paper-wrapped cigarettes have been approved for sale, the alliance said.
Photo courtesy of the New Taipei City Department of Health
The review standards for heated and traditional cigarettes were disparate and unfair toward heated tobacco products, benefiting cigarette manufacturers, it said.
Police said that organizers had submitted a schedule showing that they are to gather at 9am, set out at 10am and finish at noon.
Traffic restrictions for Ketegalan Boulevard are to include three westbound lanes, including Zhongshan S Road to Gongyuan Road, police said.
Restrictions might be in place before the start time, depending on traffic conditions, they said.
Separately yesterday, the Taiwan Anti-smoking Alliance said that the government should step up efforts to curb online sales of electronic cigarettes and focus on stopping imports at source.
The government should curb cigarettes in schools to achieve its total ban on smoking on campuses, the group said.
A rule requiring that warning labels cover 50 percent of cigarette packaging, which took effect today, is an improvement, but more work is needed, as Taiwan only ranks 16th in the world in terms of warning label coverage, down from fourth previously, it said.
National Alliance of Presidents of Parents’ Associations deputy director-general Chiao Hui-fang (焦惠芳) said that regulations for heated tobacco products fail to ban the 10 most popular flavors, showing that the rules do not meet global standards.
Common Good Association secretary-general Chang Wen-chang (張文昌) said that few venues have complied with the amended act’s demand that restaurants, bars and nightclubs ban smoking entirely.
The government must reinforce the policy, Chang said.
Taiwan Medical Alliance for the Control of Tobacco secretary-general Kuo Fei-jan (郭斐然) said there is evidence that transitioning from traditional to heated products does not mitigate health risks.
Action Alliance on Basic Education chairman Wang Han-yang (王瀚陽) said that heated tobacco products are not authorized in Taiwan and urged the government to increase penalties for distributors that promote such products.
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