Law on Tobacco Harm Prevention: For the health of the race

(Baonghean.vn) - On June 18, 2012, the 13th National Assembly, 3rd session passed the Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms (PCTHTL) and on July 2, 2012, the President signed the Order to promulgate this Law. The Law takes effect from May 1, 2013.

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The Law on Tobacco Control is a health law, not a law regulating the control of pure tobacco production and trading activities. The main objective of the Law is to reduce the harmful effects of tobacco on human health, life, the future of the nation and improve public health by regularly and continuously implementing measures to reduce the demand for tobacco, strictly control and gradually reduce the supply of tobacco; limit and gradually reduce the rate of tobacco users, especially reducing the rate of morbidity and mortality due to non-communicable diseases caused by tobacco.

That is also consistent with the viewpoint of our Party and State, which is to focus on active preventive medicine, proactively control and prevent pathogens, making an important contribution to the cause of protecting, caring for and improving people's health.

The Law has 5 chapters and 35 articles, with basic legal policies on reducing tobacco demand, strict control to reduce tobacco supply and conditions to ensure effective implementation of tobacco control work, specifically:

To implement tobacco control work in a synchronous, unified, comprehensive and effective manner, the Law stipulates both measures to reduce demand and supply for tobacco. In particular, the first priority is given to measures to reduce demand for tobacco to gradually reduce the number of tobacco users and reduce the harmful effects of tobacco, combined with measures to gradually reduce the supply of tobacco in a targeted and planned manner, ensuring feasibility and conformity with the socio-economic development orientation of Vietnam.

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The purpose of promulgating the Law is to ensure tobacco control work, so the Law does not specifically regulate tobacco business activities but only regulates tobacco business contents closely related to tobacco control, issues not yet regulated in other legal documents and issues that serve as a general legal basis for the Government to base on the Law to specifically regulate tobacco business activities.

The Law stipulates that the Government unifies the state management of tobacco control. The Ministry of Health is the agency responsible to the Government for implementing state management of tobacco control. Relevant ministries and branches, especially the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education and Training, within the scope of their tasks and powers, are responsible for proactively implementing tasks on tobacco control in the assigned fields; coordinate with the Ministry of Health in implementing state management of tobacco control. People's Committees at all levels perform the function of state management of tobacco control within the locality. This regulation helps clearly assign responsibilities to each relevant agency, serving as a basis for implementation as well as inspection and examination in tobacco control.

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In PCTHTL, there are two important groups of subjects directly involved: tobacco businesses and tobacco users. To prevent violations of the law by the above two subjects and other related subjects, the Law has stipulated 9 groups of prohibited acts in PCTHTL, which are:

Manufacturing, trading, importing, storing, and transporting fake cigarettes and products designed to look or look like cigarette packages or cigarettes; buying, selling, storing, and transporting tobacco materials and smuggled cigarettes;

Advertising and promoting tobacco; marketing tobacco directly to consumers in any form; Sponsorship by organizations and individuals trading in tobacco, except for the cases specified in Article 16 of this Law;

People under 18 years old using, buying, selling cigarettes; Employing people under 18 years old to buy, sell cigarettes; Selling, supplying cigarettes to people under 18 years old; Selling cigarettes using automatic cigarette vending machines; Smoking, selling cigarettes in prohibited locations; Using images of cigarettes in newspapers and publications specifically for children; Encouraging, forcing others to use cigarettes./.

Thanh Son

(Synthetic)