Cambodia: Phnom Penh City Hall Orders Tobacco Manufacturers to Stop Advertising

Phnom Penh city authorities have ordered all tobacco companies to stop advertising and displaying cigarettes in public because they violate the anti-smoking legislation. In a statement, Phnom Penh City Hall said that displaying cigarette cases was a direct violation of the law. The city hall noted that some tobacco companies are promoting large-scale cigarette sales in an attempt to attract cigarette smokers to enter a competition to win a prize. The city ordinance requires all tobacco companies to remove all advertisements showing cigarettes to the public in any medium, including ads on websites and social media. The city hall administration plans to cooperate with the country's health authorities and judicial institutions to prosecute tobacco companies that have violated the law. Prime Minister Hun Sen recently pledged, alongside the World Health Organization in the Asia-Pacific region, that Cambodia would be a smoke-free country by 2025. The anti-smoking legislation prohibits advertising products through posters, banners, drawings and any type of vehicle. The executive director of the Cambodia Health Movement, Mom Kong, yesterday welcomed the city hall's decision. She believes that cooperation between national and local authorities with a mechanism of warnings and then financial sanctions at the initiative of the Ministry of Health should be particularly effective. The number of people who die each day from smoking-related diseases is more than the cumulative number of deaths caused by traffic accidents, malaria and dengue fever, said Mr Kong, also noting that tobacco has a net cost of $620 million.[1] annual for the country. The United Nations Development Programme and WHO said in their 2017 report that tobacco use was responsible for the deaths of about 15,000 Cambodian citizens, or 290 lives lost every week[2]. It is particularly the poorest who are the victims. In 2017, 33% of tobacco-related deaths came from the lowest income quintile of Cambodia's population.[3].©Tobacco Free Generation

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[1] https://seatca.org/city-hall-orders-tobacco-companies-to-stop-advertising/[2] https://www.kh.undp.org/content/cambodia/en/home/library/democratic_governance/investment-case-for-tobacco-control-in-cambodia0.html[3] Ibid©National Committee Against Smoking |