The world-first ban prohibits anyone born after Jan. 1, 2007, from ever buying, using or smoking tobacco.
The Maldives has become the first country in the world to impose a generational smoking ban, barring anyone born after Jan. 1, 2007, from ever smoking, purchasing or using tobacco.
“The ban applies to all forms of tobacco, and retailers are required to verify age prior to sale,” the health ministry said Saturday as the ban came into effect.
The step “makes the Maldives the first country in the world to enforce a nationwide generational tobacco ban,” it added.
While smoking isn’t explicitly mentioned in the quran(because tobacco industry isn’t much a thing back then), the religion basically said any substance that cause self harm or impede judgement is haram. Guess what tobacco is.
In Malaysia, tobacco use in 2023 is around 19.5%, if we then divide this using the current demographic which is 70% Muslim, around 13.65% of tobacco user who is also a muslim. That’s the number of muslim that wilfully defy the islamic teaching and using substance that is considered harmful to one self. Yet when we look at alcoholic use the number is really minute to the point you will only read about it in the news, but never seen a drunk muslim. It’s exactly because one substance is banned for them while another is not.
But you know what is also banned for muslim but it still so prevalent? Gambling. Here we have this lottery where people buy a 4 digits number and the prize is given if your number matched the drawn. Because this game is simply number and have no physical form, illegal bookie can appear anywhere, and it’s so easily accessible that a lot of the bookie is set up just to serve muslim.