Baguio smoke-free program shared in Asia Pacific event in Vietnam

BAGUIO CITY — The Summer Capital’s model of smoke-free policy implementation has been featured in the 9th Asia Pacific Smoke-free Meeting held on Aug. 28 to 29 in Hue City in Vietnam and attended by over 160 leaders, advocates and experts from Southeast Asia.

City health officials led by city health officer Dr. Celia Flor Brillantes and acting assistant department head Dr. Maria Lourdes Pakoy represented the city to the event, where Baguio was among the three Philippine cities along with Iloilo and Oroquieta that served as presenters.

City tobacco control program coordinator Dr. Donnabel Panes presented the Smoke-Free ordinance enforcement model in the context of the city’s tourism industry in keeping with the event’s theme “Destination Smoke-free: Transforming Tourism Across Asia Pacific.”

“In our city of Baguio, where tourism drives the economy, smoke-free implementation was built into tourism itself. We circulated the rules to all tourism sectors, informing guests visitors, required hotels and restaurants to post signs, and made smoke-free compliance part of business policies,” she said.

Panes advocated for clear and strong policies, and meaningful but responsible implementation.

“When the law is explicit, enforcement is unshakable. Compliance is not a courtesy. It is a legal and moral obligation, and when obligations are broken, penalties must follow. Fines must be high enough to hurt. Enforcement must be felt,” she stressed.

She said that to be complete, enforcement must always be supplemented by monitoring, evaluation, research, learning and accountability.

“We must track every violation, every penalty, every cost, use this data to sharpen our policies and strengthen advocacy, engage communities so compliance becomes self-sustaining and guard fiercely against tobacco industry interference,” she said.

Overall, the event, which was organized by the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance in collaboration with the Vietnam Tobacco Control Fund and the Ministry of Health-Vietnam, “underscored the importance of smoke-free tourism policies that protect health, preserve culture and boost economies.”

The participants jointly committed to act to propel Asia-Pacific, particularly the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a front-runner in smoke-free tourism.