What would it take for Naga City Ordinance 95-070 to be enforced?
For several months already, we have urged the Naga City government which issued the above the ordinance to attend to the judicious implementation of prohibiting smoking in public places and inside public transportation. It would seem, however, that same city government could not care less: its reputation as a "smoke-free city" gained through the passage of the said ordinance has also gone the way of its early moniker "An Maogmang Lugar." In other words, Naga City is neither "smoke-free" nor "maogma" anymore.
Naga City Ordinance 95-070 was noteworthy since it antedated the Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999 or Republic Act 8749. Similarly, the same ordinance anticipated the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003 or RA 9211 which states, among others, that the selling or distributing of tobacco products like cigarettes is prohibited within 100 meters from any point of the perimeter of a school or public playground. One may say that the ordinance was a landmark legislation for the Sanggunian Panglungsod.
And yet, what can be observed as one moves around the city's public places or rides public transport like jeepneys and tricycles? Stores and vendors in the vicinity of the different schools in the city sell cigarettes to minors and adults alike, unmindful of RA 9211 and of City Ordinance 95-070. Along downtown and the plazas, one unmistakably sees smoking in public brazenly done. Law enforcement personnel do not apprehend or at the least, admonish those smoking in their plain sight. Worse, one can even see a few Public Safety Officers (PSO) smoking while attending to their duties as the city's traffic enforcers.
Of particular urgency is the continued and rampant selling of cigarettes to students and minors.
As victims of the vice of smoking, these minors turn into polluters of clean air for non-smokers. This perpetuates the health dangers that have been shown to be the effects of smoking and second-hand smoking.
We ask again: what would it take to enforce these laws? We also ask: what had caused the very lax implementation of these laws? What would it take for Naga City to be smoke-free once more?