IN an ideal world, the average working adult in Malaysia would have a healthy working culture, an active lifestyle and a good eight hours of sleep, but in the state that we live in, our reality is nowhere near the ideal life.  

If anything, we are getting further away from it. With inflation and growing uncertainties for the future, the pressure is taking its toll on our mental health. More and more Malaysians are also forced to take on extra work hours.

Even worse, the nature of the jobs available to those who need it the most are often work that is repetitious, monotonous and lacking in variety.

P-hailing riders, bus and lorry drivers, for instance, have to spend long hours on the road daily to earn an income. External stimuli are sometimes needed by these workers to stay alert while they work.

According to a study on impact of job stress on smoking, stress itself presents physiological and psychological challenges to the body and individuals respond by self-medicating, through smoking, to maintain homeostasis.

This is not even a new problem so it should not come as a surprise when individuals resort to consumption of harmful products as a way to cope with the challenges they have to face.

Therefore, to impose tough-on-harm policies is rather elitist and that shows clear detachment from understanding the challenges and pressure faced by the working class.

For instance, high taxation on cigarettes would force them to look to the black market to fulfil their needs, where the products are even more harmful due to the absence of regulation and compliance with safety standards.

In 2020, there was a dramatic increase in illicit cigarettes consumption from 52.3% in 2016 to 63.8%  as reported in an illicit cigarettes study in Malaysia.

Punishments can be weakly effective. However, punishing individuals for tobacco consumption through taxation carries the unacceptable side effect of disproportionately further burdening the poor.

The demonisation of tobacco consumption as a social illness disregards the fact that nicotine addiction is a real disorder that needs to be handled with well-thought-out policies and empathy.

Taxation and a blanket ban, therefore, cannot be a stand-alone approach. It must be complemented with harm reduction policies that could provide and regulate safer alternatives for the working class to slowly transition towards a tobacco-free future.

This looks like regulating vaping and alternative tobacco product devices that has shown promising prospects of reducing harm. For example, a heated tobacco device produces an average of 90-95% reduction in the level of harmful chemicals than a combustible cigarette. The potential these new devices hold as the better alternative must be recognised and made accessible to tobacco consumers.

They are not free of harm, but they take us a lot closer to the tobacco-free future we want. More than any other moral policing approaches will.

Therefore, the government must start looking at how to deal with Malaysia’s consumption of harmful products from the harm-reduction lens. The solution must be multidimensional and free from prejudice towards consumers.

All in all, policies that are not rooted in empathy and understanding of the issue should not force individuals from the working class to make decisions based on moral. That in itself is immoral. – February 3, 2022.

* Cellini Basri is head of external relations at Bait al-Amanah.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.