POL246 - Public Policy Analysis Assignment - Murdoch University

Assignment Task

Smoking Prohibition in Singapore

Smoking problem is a common and aggravating problem in today’s world. Smoking is defined as inhaling and expelling the smoke of tobacco or any other substances which are the harmful substances. The secondhand smoke which contains the harmful substances can cause coronary heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and other diseases. The smoking prohibition was first introduced in 1970 to protect the non-smokers from the secondhand smoke exposure. Despite numerous efforts made for the smoke-free law throughout the years, the smoking prevalence in Singapore had increased from in 2004 to in 2010 (See, Yong, Poh & Lum, 2019). Most of the public places nowadays like parks, gardens, nature reserves, buildings, food retail establishments and transport nodes are where smoking is prohibited. To make Singapore a cleaner and healthier place to live in, the National Environment Agency has been progressively extending the smoking prohibition to more public places.

Smoking Prohibition Extension

According to the Decra Stone’s model, this policy will be classified as inadvertent cause when the actions made by the citizens have unforeseen side effects towards the surrounding people and environment (Stone, 1989, p.285). Causal factor that contributes towards the policy problems is the increasing numbers of non-smokers getting lung cancer. The non-smokers made up 3 in 10 lung cancer patients, according to the study done by National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) (National Cancer Centre Singapore, 2016). The proportion of never-smokers against smokers getting lung cancer had increased from within 10 years time (Toh, Ong, Lim, Tan, Ng, Kanesvaran, Seow, Ang & Tan, 2018). Other than lungs cancer, the non-smokers have higher risk of getting Hemorrhagic stroke when exposed to carbon monoxide which is one of the harmful substances from the tobacco smoke (Ho, Lim, Zheng, Leow, Tan, Pek, Raju, Seow, Yeo, Sharma, Aik & Ong, 2022). As the public health of the non-smokers citizens have significantly decreased, the government has been progressively extending the prohibition policy to more public places that are easily accessible.

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