Commentary: Smoking near windows dismissed as neighbourly nuisance but has public health costs
SINGAPORE: Singapore has been a tough identify for a smoker to live in.
Smokers cannot seem to catch a break, especially with the suggestion to ban smoking near dwelling balconies and windows past Nee Soon GRC Member of Parliament and Group Parliament Committee for Sustainability and Surroundings Louis Ng in October reviving a national debate virtually how far the state should go to gainsay smoking completely.
Make smokers close their windows when they smoke, some suggested.
Ban smoking altogether, a few frustrated netizens said.
Heed: Is it time to go subsequently smokers who light up almost the windows of their homes?
TOUGH MEASURES Against SMOKING IN Contempo YEARS
Singapore has rolled out a slew of increasingly ambitious legislative measures to stem the habit, especially over the last three years
Shops have not been allowed to display cigarettes openly since 2017.
Tax hikes in 2022 have raised the duties on cigarettes past ten per cent.
Ugly health warning labels and standardised packaging have been imposed post-obit amendments to the Tobacco Deed, and have gone some way to stigmatise the addiction.
Laws have also been tightened to raise the legal age of smoking, since the National Health Survey 2010 written report showed eight in 10 smokers were hooked before turning 21.
And to stalk need for culling tobacco products acting as easy gateways to cigarettes for youths, like eastward-cigarettes and shisha, a ban on their possession, purchase or use was imposed in 2018.
In fact, this multi-pronged effort to stem smoking in 2022 was and so publicly visible, Dean of the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health Dr Teo Yik Ying coined it the twelvemonth Singapore attempted to snuff out smoking.
READ: Commentary: The year Singapore attempts to snuff out tobacco
Smokers today are also no longer free to low-cal up anywhere they desire in smoke-free Orchard Road and take to stand in vivid yellow boxes if they do.
Such efforts have borne fruit. The smoking rate has dropped from 14.three per cent in 2010 to 10.half dozen per cent in 2019.
This is a pregnant achievement to exist lauded, when the Health Ministry had previously revealed in 2022 that smoking incidence had fluctuated betwixt 12 per cent and 14 per cent over the past decade with no clear pattern of decline.
Smoking rates should be brought downwards where the public health costs are loftier. At least Due south$600 million a year in straight healthcare costs and lost productivity for Singapore according to a 2022 estimate in renowned medical journal BMJ Open up.
Some public health experts, like Prof Chia Kee Seng, have gone even farther to call for exterminating smoking completely seeing that it is "an archaic habit with no identify in modern guild".
READ: Commentary: Smoking is an archaic habit with no identify in modernistic society
TACKLING SMOKING AT WINDOWS A PRIORITY
People ultimately should exist able to practice what they desire at habitation, many say. Only when information technology comes to smoking, all of us - smokers and non-smokers - know it'due south a whole different ball game.
For one, while smokers have information technology bad in terms of the wellness effects, those around them also acquit the costs of their habit.
This used to apply to family members stuck at habitation with the smoker, but has taken on broader significant when the pandemic unleashed Singapore's biggest shift towards piece of work-from-home (WFH) and dwelling-based learning.
Smoking-related complaints in HDB areas rose nearly six-fold in the first nine months of 2022 compared to the whole of 2017, Senior Minister of State for National Development Sim Anne revealed in Parliament concluding week.
READ: Commentary: When Singapore homes become workspaces – huge changes in the house and beyond
Even that rise may be an underestimate considering how many of united states tend to be polite residents embarrassed to be raising a ruckus every time our neighbour smokes or creates a small-scale inconvenience.
"Work-from-home is the new normal. People used to work in the role. They come home, and for one or two hours, the neighbours may fume once or twice in the evenings. But people now are dwelling house most of the fourth dimension, and they may face a whole twenty-four hours of secondhand smoke," Mr Ng said to me on CNA's Eye of the Affair podcast.
The consequences can be serious. "A lot of the residents complained to me about secondhand fume because their children have asthma … nevertheless they accept a neighbour who's constantly smoking at their windows," Mr Ng highlights.
"Imagine if your neighbour is spraying toxic chemicals out of his house and you're breathing information technology in … that's exactly what secondhand smoke is."
READ: Commentary: COVID-19 offers fresh impetus to quit smoking
"There is no safe minimal level of secondhand smoke," Dr Yvette van der Eijk from the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health shared on that same episode.
"Secondhand smoke contains something like 60 carcinogens and hundreds of chemicals known to be toxic ... Information technology may exist more dangerous for our health than what smokers inhale ... because (these are) not burnt completely," she highlighted.
SINGAPORE'S APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE HAS Always BEEN INTERVENTIONIST
When this latest smoking ban suggestion was resurfaced in October by Mr Ng, concerns over intrusiveness and enforcement mushroomed online, which have been surprising to me.
Singapore has arguably taken an aggressive, interventionist approach to public health for decades.
Countless compulsory immunisation programmes, like those against measles and diphtheria, which saw the mass vaccination of infants and schoolhouse children as part of the National Babyhood Immunisation Schedule, have been accepted without much fuss.
Even when such programmes are opt-in, like the BCG shot that guards confronting tuberculosis, the take-up rate has been close to 100 per cent for decades. Similarly high rates for the opt-in Homo Papillomavirus vaccination programme for Secondary 1 girls, which started last year, are also expected.
READ: Commentary: Making sense of shifting goalposts in public policy and the science of COVID-nineteen
Public acceptance of enforcement against other endemic diseases, like the National Environs Agency'south checks against dengue, which can come up with fines but crave the permission of residents for inspections, have also been well received.
I suspect people do understand and accept rules that regulate individual behaviour which could have community health ramifications.
READ: Commentary: Uncovering the factors fueling record-high dengue cases in Singapore
The practicalities of enforcing a ban on smoking almost windows demand to be taken into business relationship simply the technology does be.
Cameras are already used to find high-ascension littering and thermal scanners smoking in common corridors. Extending their use to watch for smoking may be worth because for a stronger, public health imperative.
During the podcast, Mr Ng showed us an paradigm taken by these cameras of a smoker throwing cigarette butts out of their window.
"That's how powerful our cameras are - powerful in the sense that … they're not intrusive … if you're sitting in your sofa or lying on your bed, they tin't capture you but if you're at your balcony, leaning out and smoking, then they can capture you."
But he was also quick to caution that such ways should exist a last resort, and the laws be left to provide a potent deterrence against smoking almost windows and shift social norms in the same way Singapore has treated littering.
For an MP whose GRC has gone out of the style to build smoking boxes to accommodate smokers, he understands how much of a eye footing is needed.
READ: Commentary: Youth smoking is a problem, so is youth vaping
IN Footstep WITH DETERRING SMOKING ALTOGETHER
As Singapore moves towards a scheme of national wellness insurance to pool risks and costs surrounding hospitalisation (through MediShield Life) and disability (Careshield Life) and strengthen these programmes in the spirit of collective responsibility, it may merely exist a matter of time before an arguably even more intrusive pace of pricing in smoking is taken.
Smokers usually pay a higher premium for life insurance policies compared to non-smokers, according to AIA Insurance, given the health risks tied to smoking.
In the United states of america, smokers also pay up to fifty per cent higher for health insurance.
We may exist some fourth dimension away from that, but where Careshield Life already adopts actuarial principles similar charging women higher premiums in line with insurance manufacture practice, and hikes in Medishield Life premiums have been proposed, that craven might come up home to roost sooner than we call up.
READ: Commentary: When information technology comes to insurance, less is more for young adults starting out
And seen in these terms, banning smoking near windows is a small issue in the contend on smoking.
Even if yous lay aside such trends, Mr Ng'due south suggestion, equally one that gets to the heart of the concern of smoke wafting into homes where people are spending more time in, including elderly and minor children, is worth looking into.
Like Mr Ng said on our podcast, the challenge should be seen through a public health lens rather than one of neighbourly disputes or complaints past not-smokers.
Lin Suling is executive editor at CNA Digital News where she oversees the Commentary section and hosts the Heart of the Matter podcast.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/commentary-smoking-near-windows-dismissed-neighbourly-nuisance-has-public-health-costs-283166
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