According to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the government collected nearly RM300 million from vape and e-cigarettes, while cigarette taxes amounted to RM15 billion. We speak to Dr Wency Bui, Senior Lecturer at the School of Business & Economics at Universiti Putra Malaysia about cigarette taxing and pricing.

Other stories we covered:

• Procurement Bill raises alarms: The tabling of a new Procurement Bill is drawing concern from watchdog groups like the C4 Center, who believe it gives too much approval power to the Finance Minister and State Chief Ministers. We speak to Pushpan Murugiah, the CEO of the Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4), about the risks of the Bill and the key changes that should be made.

• Preserving the folk songs of Tamil labourers: A crowdfunding campaign for the upcoming feature-length musical-documentary, Araro Ariraro is ending on the 31st of August. The documentary focuses on the experiences of Indian-Malayan plantation labourers in the colonial era, and the folk songs they sang to survive. For more on the film we spoke to director, Gogularaajan Rajendran. To contribute, you can visit omsakthifilms.com or @plantation.life.

• Athletes struggling with mental health: Ajitpal Singh’s recent article in the New Straits Time referenced shuttler Lee Zii Jia and swimmer Phee Jinq En, who are going through personal troubles. We hear from Ajitpal about the importance of paying attention to athletes’ mental health and from Dr Alvin Ng, Founding President of the Malaysian Society of Clinical Psychology, about the high stress athletes have to deal with.

• Trump isn't a dictator. Unless...: United States President Donald Trump joked that Americans would prefer a dictator in power. Considering this isn’t the first time the words ‘dictator’ and ‘Trump’ have appeared in the same sentence, we decided to talk about whether this would actually be the case.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Produced by: Tee Shiao Eek, Juliet Jacobs, Sudais Ferhard, Alia Zefri, Sneha Harikannan

Presented by: Lee Chwi Lynn, Susan Tam

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Categories:  international,  politics,  culture,  History/Heritage,  film,  music,  performing arts,  sports,  wellness,  economy,  government,  Law/Activism,  controversies,  health policy,  markets

Tags:  procurement bill,  vape tax,  president donald trump,  dictator,  mental health,  malaysian athletes,  lee zii jia,  plantation workers,  tamil music,  documentary,  parliament,  cigarette taxes,