Duterte Orders Strict Smoking Ban in Philippines, and Asks Citizens to Help<br />By FELIPE VILLAMORMAY 18, 2017<br />MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte, who has overseen a deadly campaign to eradicate drug use in the Philippines, has now ordered a strict public ban on smoking<br />and called on citizens to help the local authorities apprehend smokers.<br />Emer Rojas, a cancer survivor and the president of the antismoking group New Vois Association of the Philippines, said he hoped the<br />new measure would significantly reduce smoking in a country where it is common to see adults and children smoking on the street.<br />He said the national smoking ban could also save thousands of Filipinos — smokers<br />and those around them, who endure secondhand smoke — from cancer and other illnesses.<br />It also prohibits anyone under 18 from "using, selling or buying cigarettes or tobacco products." More than a quarter<br />of Filipinos smoke, according to a 2015 World Health Organization report, including 11 percent of minors.<br />The nationwide measure, known as Executive Order 26, is similar to the near universal smoking<br />ban Mr. Duterte put in place in Davao City in 2002, when he was the city’s mayor.
