The Health Ministry has consulted with officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF regarding President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu's plan to impose a generational ban on smoking.
The agencies advised the ministry on the precautions to be taken to successfully implement the smoking ban for people born after a specific year. Health Minister Abdulla Nazim attended the meeting.
Muizzu announced the plan in his podcast on March 27. He said the plan is to implement a generational ban on smoking for those between the ages of 18 and 25 and everyone born after that.
"We propose a couple of options. January 1, 2007, January 1, 2004, January 1, 2000, these three options. We will discuss these three options at the technical level and look at the issues and pass a law to ban it in the future," he said.
He said it would be easier to get young people to stop smoking than to try to get people between the ages of 30 and 40 to stop smoking.
"Youngsters who haven't been smoking for too long, it will be easier to stop. They will be less attached to the habit, It will be difficult for a 40 or 50-year-old to get rid of it compared to a 20-year-old or 25-year-old," he added.
Last year, the government decided to develop a four-year plan to tackle the tobacco problem. But the plan has not yet been publicized.
However, the laws were changed to ban the import of vapes from November 15 and ban the use of vapes from December 15.
Amendments have also been brought to increase the import duty on each cigarette to MVR 8, while the duty on other tobacco products has been increased by 50 percent.
There are concerns as this has created a black market with low-quality cigarettes.
