The Ban Country

Singapore's latest effort to reduce the number of smokers in Singapore is to ban more places for smoking. Is this the only kind of measures Singapore can come up with to decrease the number of smokers? Has this solution proven to yield drastic decrease in the number of smokers the first time we implemented it? If it is, then good for us. But banning is not a long term solution, if it has not been very obvious to us yet. If it isn't, then to what purpose are we still implementing this even though the previous experience already showed us the result?

Personally, I don't believe that this solution is anywhere effective. simply because it doesn't tackle the root cause of why people smokes.

I am not a big fan of cigarettes because they stink, and I have tried convincing my dad to quit smoking. But he always left me speechless just by the backing of this one reason that i have yet to know a rebuttal for, and seems like the Health Promotion Board hasn't addressed it either. That is, smoking is the only recreation that he can depend on to relieve stress. Oh yeah oh yeah, my first response was of course, the standard answer, there are always other ways of relieving stress, not necessarily smoking right? But think about it, a packet of cigarettes may be expensive, but it is the quickest solution to relief stress! Other activities like reading, bowling, sports etc etc etc. that you can think of are either time consuming, or expensive activities. Of course, I'm not referring to all of us here, just specifically lower income groups who usually work 10 or more hours everyday. Long hours and low pay, surely Singapore doesn't think this standard reasoning that our citizens have been fed upon is able to convince this group of people?

To me, this sounds like a root cause for smoking. It's basic human needs - Work hard, play hard? You work too hard and play too soft , you find yourself sinking into depression. But playing can be expensive and time consuming in Singapore, so it only natural that smoking comes to as the solution! So now, the task here is just to provide an alternative for these people to engage in rather than passing laws for ban ban and more bans.

Speaking about bans, i mentioned that it is definitely not a long term solution. Enforcing more bans encourages people to be more creative in importing illegal cigarettes to Singapore, a good practice used in a skewed manner. Increase in illegal cigarettes means tighter control. Tighter control means more laws are passed down, more laws means limited freedom. Limited freedom means we should start to feel ashamed for calling ourselves a "democratic" country when we are being binded everywhere we go. So why come down hard on citizens when you only yield so little result?