Bhutan King considering giving up smoke

Bhutanese King, Jigme Singye Wangchuk,  may not be a role model for denying democratic rights to his own people, he seems to be setting up an example by giving up smoking in public places, reports say.

Bhutanese monarch Jigme Singye Wangchuk. (Photo source:bifa.org.bf)

Bhutan passed a law last month that bans smoking in public places in the entire country. Though people can still bring in cigarettes to Bhutan, they will have to pay a 200 per cent duty on every packet that they bring and can only smoke within the confines of their homes or hotel rooms, according to reports.

“The ban has already forced me to cut down on my smoking and now I am even thinking of giving it up altogether,” Telegraph, a leading Indian daily, quoted the Bhutanese monarch as saying in New Delhi.

The Bhutanese king graced the Republic Day function of India (on Jan. 26) as its chief guest.

The king, who is known to be a cigar smoker, does not want to divulge whether he occasionally also smokes cigarettes or how many in a day he smokes. “These are details which I am not going to share with you,” Wangchuk said. But he was quick to point out that the ban on smoking was part of the process to decentralise power that he had initiated more than a decade back, according to the daily.

“The ban started from district committees which passed laws banning smoking in their areas. Later, it was picked up by others and finally a countrywide ban was passed in the National Assembly,” he said.

Wangchuk was also frank in his observation about Nepal, especially the threat posed by the Maoist rebels there. He observed that the threat posed by the Maoists in Nepal was becoming serious and warned that unless dealt with effectively and resolved at the earliest, it will have a negative impact in the neighbourhood as well.