Hong Kong’s Success and Future Challenges in Controlling Tobacco
Hong Kong’s cigarette use prevalence at 9.5% is lower than almost any other high income setting. The battle against tobacco in Hong Kong goes back 40 years. University of Hong Kong faculty ( Judith Mackay, TH Lam , Sophia Chan , Daniel Ho ) have had a large role in the anti-tobacco movement. A government agency called Committee on Smoking and Health ( COSH) was chartered in 1987. Smoking prevalence in Hong Kong halved from 23·3% in 1982 to 11·8% in 2008. I put together a graph to tell the story based on health department data and other sources (1) . The biggest decline in tobacco use was in men from 1982 to 1990. Tobacco use may have already been declining when a tobacco tax hike of 300% was imposed. Tobacco tax hikes in 1991 and 2009 were not followed by dramatic behavioral responses. Ad bans and indoor smoking bans in 1999 and 2007 respectively have been part of the policy toolkit. In 2021 Hong Kong passed a law to ban e-cigarettes. ...