The World No Tobacco Day award presented to the Department of Health by the World Health Organization (WHO) is a recognition of its hard work in tobacco control in the past 30 years, Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan said today.

Speaking to reporters after attending the award’s presentation ceremony this afternoon, Prof Chan said: “Throughout the past 30 years, the Government has been working very hard on tobacco control through a multipronged approach - legislation, taxation, public education as well as provision of smoking cessation services.”

She noted that through such hard work, the city’s smoking prevalence has gone down from 23% in the 1980s to the current 10%.

“We are aiming at getting it down to a single digit as soon as possible. In terms of our action plan of non-communicable diseases, we have set the target of our smoking prevalence to 7.8% by 2025.”

She added the Government will continue to adopt a multipronged approach as well as working closely with the WHO to keep itself abreast of the world trend in tobacco control.

On the Smoking (Public Health) (Amendment) Bill 2019 that aims to ban e-cigarettes, Prof Chan expressed the hope that the Legislative Council Bills Committee would finish its work in scrutinising the bill as soon as possible.

She said the Government would also strengthen education to the younger generation as well as widening the scope of smoking cessation services to cover new and alternative smoking products.