According to Source A, the public health risk highlighted is second hand smoke (SHS).
In the picture, since the smokers, who are the parents, are smoking in the public area, thus lead to the people around them, who are their children, unavoidably inhale the SHS. They look very bitter and they have to wear masks to avoid the SHS. Thus, lead to poor respiratory health of both smokers and the surrounding people and increase the risk of getting respiratory disease, which add burden to the medical system in Hong Kong. Therefore, to sum up, the public health risk highlighted is second hand smoke (SHS).
2c.Which two tobacco control policies shown in Source B might be more effective in dealing with the public health risk highlighted in Source A in Hong Kong? Explain your answer with reference to the sources and your own knowledge. (10 marks)
With reference to the sources and my prior knowledge, anti-smoking campaigns promoted through the mass media and taxation on the purchase of cigarettes are the two tobacco control policies that might be more effective in dealing with the public health risk highlighted in Source A in Hong Kong.
There are three criteria that determining the effectiveness of a policy, namely correspondence, profoundness and comprehensiveness. For correspondence, it is about how well the policy tackles the root problem. For profoundness, it is about how the policy raises awareness. For comprehensiveness, it is about how many stakeholders the policy cover.
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For the anti-smoking campaigns promoted through the mass media, it is more effective in Hong Kong since in the long term, it can enhance the profoundness as it can raise the awareness of the general public about the harmful effects of smoking. Also, it can tackle the root problem of the public health risk, which is the lack of understanding of the harmfulness of smoking and in turn do not give up smoking, as they might think smoking is just for the successful and mature image without considering the harmful consequences. Through launching a series of anti-smoking campaigns, it can tackle the root cause and thus the correspondence is high. Moreover, the comprehensiveness is also high. Since the information transmitted by mass media can affects most of the sectors of society in Hong Kong because of their broadness, promoting anti-smoking campaigns through them will cover most of the people in Hong Kong.
In conclusion, anti-smoking campaigns promoted through the mass media is more effective in the long term. For the taxation on the purchase of cigarettes, it is more effective in the short term in Hong Kong because it is compulsory-based, which will add economic burden to the smokers, and in turn use economic mean to give them a greater motivation to give up smoking as they have to use more money to buy cigarettes, which has the most direct effect on them, thus enhance profoundness of this policy. According to the statistics done by Bachelor of Medicine of HKU in 2009, the number of smokers reduced by half after the Hong Kong government implemented the policy of increasing 50% taxation on cigarettes. Moreover, it is also comprehensive as it will affect all the smokers in Hong Kong and they all will have to under this taxation regulation. To sum up, taxation on the purchase of cigarettes is more effective in the short term.
For establishing smoke-free areas, it is not as effective as the two mentioned above is that the smokers can still smoke without paying extra money in non smoke-free area in Hong Kong, such as streets, which would not pose any deterrence and motivation on them to stop smoking.
For warning labels on cigarette packets, it is less effective than the two because the smokers can just ignore them and they will not have any money loss if they do not study the warning labels just like the taxation policy, thus they will not have much motivation to give up smoking and this policy can just raise the awareness of the harmful effects of smoking among the smokers to a small extent.
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For bans on cigarette advertisement, it is not as effective as the two because the root cause of the public health risk is that people lacks understanding of the harmful effects of smoking, this policy is not focusing on the root cause, but curing the symptoms only. Also, they can still buy cigarettes at the same price with any added taxation, thus less effective than the taxation policy as people are reluctant to give up smoking because no economic mean is used.
For programmes for giving up smoking, although the correspondence and profoundness are the same as anti-smoking campaigns promoted through the mass media since it can tackle the root problem and raise the awareness of giving up smoking in the general public in Hong Kong, the comprehensiveness is not high because according to the sources, share of world population is 28% for anti-smoking campaigns, but only 14% for programmes for giving up smoking in 2010. Therefore, it is not as effective as the two.
