Hong Kong cigarette warnings should be ‘scarier’

The undersecretary of the Hong Kong Food and Health Bureau, Sophia Chan Siu-chee, has said that the bureau expects later this year to propose that cigarette health warnings, which are said currently to cover about 50 percent ‘of the pack’, should be increased in size and made ‘scarier’, according to a story in the South China Morning Post relayed by the TMA.

The proposal would be presented to the Legislative Council along with others; one of which would seek to expand no-tobacco-smoking areas.

Another proposal would look to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes.

Chan said the existing cigarette-pack health warnings had been in place since 2006 and that the government believed it was time to update them, though the story did not go into details about what had led the government to come to this belief.

The proposed revised health warning labels would include messages that specifically targeted women smokers, Chan said, because the number of women who smoked had risen by nearly 73 percent between 1990 and 2012: from 56,100 to 96,800.

The new health warning labels would highlight too the health risks that children faced from exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and “third-hand” smoke.

A cigarette tax increase would be considered during the next fiscal year.