Friday, July 18, 2025

So what will you be calling for next - a ban on cigarettes, alcohol, and kapcais?

What happens to Regulation — and Enforcement?

KL, July 18: Out of the blue, a local newspaper earlier this week called for a nationwide ban on vaping. It said it was worried that 14.9% of school students aged 13-17 were vape users (it cited a 2022 study). It was also alarmed that 65% of vape contents had meth and ecstasy, “two drugs favoured by teenagers”. 

On top of that, vape-drug processing labs are being discovered around the country. “How many such drug labs there are in the country is an unknown but,” the editorial surmised, “if this isn’t a present danger to the country, what else is?” 

Well, I can think of a few aside from corruption. Cigarette addition has been a “present danger” to this country for years and years. So has drug abuse (despite having sent scores of people to the gallows). Alcohol abuse, too, I’m sure. 

And for many years, our roads have been turned into bloody and mangled death zones for young Malaysians, including teenagers. Between 2019 and 2021, half of the 14,308 deaths as a result of road crashes were youths, according to Paul Tan. This translatesd to an average of 7,077 young lives lost each year. In 2019 alone, 2,600 Malaysians aged 16-30 were killed in road accidents. The majority were motorcyclists, including your e-hailing riders.

Surprised that the same daily has not called for a ban on cigarettes, cocktails, and cup-cais (mopeds or small motorcycles).

To be fair, others have called for vaping to be banned. In fact, Johor, Kelantan, Terengganu, Perlis, Kedah and Pahang have already banned the sale of vapes. Selangor is considering it. But when a newspaper call for a ban on something — anything — I have questions to ask.

Will an outright ban solve the problem? 

Like cigarettes and alcohol, when you push it underground, the black market will thrive — and that will be even harder to control. 

Take a leaf from the Prohibition: America banned the consumption of alcohol a century ago (known as Prohibition) but half of the adult population wanted to continue drinking so they went underground, creating thousands of speakeasies and a corrupt bootleg industry. The trade of unregulated alcohol had serious public health consequences while the policing of the Prohibition was rife with biases, contradictions and corruption. America ended the “experiment” after 13 years, in 1933. Today some places have local restrictions but there is no nationwide alcohol consumption or sale in the US.

I spoke randomly to vapers and ex-vapers to gauge their views on whether a ban will work. One  of them suspect that tobacco companies are behind the current campaign to ban vapes in Malaysia but that wasn’t what was asked. 

Rather than denying adult smokers access to less harmful alternatives, people generally agree that we should be enforcing stricter age checks, limiting how vapes are displayed in shops, and controlling where they can be sold. 

A practical way forward is to allow sales only at licensed convenience store chains or in properly regulated vape specialty stores.

We can also consider enforcing plain packaging or plain design for vape products (less neon or bright colours, for instance). This may help reduce the appeal to teenagers. 

At the end of the day, vapes should be treated under the same regulatory lens as cigarettes — with proper rules on flavours, marketing, and sales practices.

The issue of drugs being found in vapes is a serious one, of course. But then again, the issue of drugs NOT found in vapes has been a serious issue in Malaysia for decades.

Enforcement is key. That’s why enforcement can’t just stop at the retail level — customs and immigration need to step up. Open tank vapes coming in from overseas should be randomly opened and tested. 

Open tank vape systems are a key problem. These are refillable devices that allow users to manually fill the vape liquid, which makes it very easy for people to modify or spike them with illicit drugs like cannabis oil or our own ketum.. There’s no way to know what’s inside once it’s tampered with. That’s why many countries are starting to phase out open tank systems in favour of closed pod systems that are sealed, tamper-resistant, and easier to regulate.

We need to close the loopholes at our borders before it reaches our streets and schools.

We cannot allow the cops to tell us they don’t know how many vape-drug labs there are in the country. Unacceptable. We taxpayers deserve better. The cops need to be able to find out exactly how many there are, where these labs are, and close each one of them down. Put the crooks behind bars for a long, long time, including those who have been protectin them all this while.

And here’s another aspect we must not overlook — the economic side, especially for young Malaysians.

A study by the Malaysian Vape Chamber of Commerce in 2021 showed that 75% of vape retail workers and 82% in manufacturing are Malays, mostly in their 20s. So this isn’t just about products — it’s about jobs, livelihoods, and entrepreneurship for many youths trying to make a decent living.

The industry has grown into a legitimate sector worth over RM3 billion. It supports more than 30,000 jobs and contributed over RM141 million in taxes between 2021 and 2024. 

This is not some fringe or underground market — it’s real, and it deserves smart, proportionate regulation. Blanket bans, like the one the local editorial is campaigning for, will only wipe out legal businesses and push everything not just under the carpet but also into the shadowy, dangerous underground.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

NST turns 180, the Tun reaches a century, and Media Council, 50 years in the making, names founding members

Kuala Lumpur, 15 July: Most of the founding members of the Malaysian Media Council, who were officially named today, were very little when the first call to set up the body was made 50 years ago. It has been a long journey.
The 12 appointees on the founding MMC board represent three categories: 1. Media Owners: Phyllis Wong (Utusan Borneo), James Sarda (Sabah Publishing House), Premesh Chandran (Malaysiakini), and Ashwad Ismail (Astro); 2. Media Professionals: Teh Athira (NUJ), Radzi Razak (Gerakan Media Merdeka), Ronnie Teo (Kuching Journalists Association) and Muthameez Manan (Tamil Media Assocation); and 3. Public Interest Representatives: Gayathry Venkiteswaran (University of Nothingham, Malaysia), Celine Lim (SAVE Rivers), Terence Ooi (Wiki Impact) and Azmyl Yunor (Sunway University). 
The government may have two reps on board but Fahmni Fadzil, the Comms minister, has assured the government does not intend to influence the running of the Council in any way. Mmm … (MMM, by the way, is the Council’s Malay abbreviation, to mean Majlis Media Malaysia). 
Kudos to Fahmi for succeeding where all his successors had failed. But let’s not forget, we owe a debt of gratitude to the pioneers who had made the call for the Council starting from 1973. I hope the first AGM in November will identify these pioneers and pay tribute to them. 
I was involved in some discussions previous governments had held with editors and journalists on the proposed Council but I was never a major player. A Kadir Jasin was. Arwah Pak Non, especially. Possibly, my single most important contribution to the process, if I may say so myself, was to shoot down a proposal to have a former Judge to lead the MMC. 
I’ve always taken the position that the Media Council should be led by a journalist. 
Read also my previous postings on the Council: Blog Alliance opposes media council (11 Nov 2008); Why, a journalist should lead the Media Council, of course! (29 May 2019). 
 
** Tun Mahathir Mohamad turned a hundred on 10 July. My Abah would have hit a century, too, if he had stayed alive. He died young, in his 70s. Happy birthday, Tun, moga sihat sihat sihat dan dilindungiNya selalu. All of us owe some form of gratitude or other to the Old Man and the policies, programs and prosperity he brought this nation, especially during his 22-year tenure. 

 

*** The New Straits Times was already 139 years old when I joined the Business Times, then the only financial daily in this country, in 1984. Today it celebrated its 180th anniversary and I savoured the day by buying a copy of the newspaper at Bangsar Village. So many great memories with so many great people, some are dead and some are living (leaving?). 
I was at Balai Berita for 21 years and was editor of two of its newspapers - BT (1998 to 2001) and the Malay Mail (2001-2006). I was also engaged in a five-year legal battle with NST and its five top executives from 2007 (it was a world’s first between a media company and a blogger, so we somehow created history together there!) but even then I’ve maintained great ties with many journalists and editors from that great place.
May the Old Lady of Jalan Riong rule for many years to come …