WHATEVER policy the government enunciates, whatever law the government enacts, will always have an unintended consequence. That is simply an unwritten law.
To make a law or policy sound, practical, effective, enforceable, and its objectives achievable, policymakers need to foresee and address potential unintended consequences when they formulate any policy. By doing so, they can ensure that any unintended consequence does not overshadow or negate the policy’s intended benefit.
Sadly, that is not always the case. Many times, policymakers and lawmakers overlook, if not ignore, the unintended consequence. As a result, the policy becomes ineffective, unable to address the issues or the problems it is supposed to address, and the unintended consequence puts to naught the policy’s intended benefit.
Policies or laws that simply impose bans or prohibitions are often the ones with the worst unintended consequences.
Take the “color” or number-coding scheme imposed in Metro Manila beginning mid-1990s. The intent was to ease—if not solve—Metro Manila’s worsening traffic problem by banning private vehicles with license plates ending in certain numbers on certain days. It was meant to reduce the volume of vehicles on the road. But we all know what actually happened.
Many car owners simply bought an extra car or two and made sure that they got different license plate numbers to skirt the ban. Not only did the policy defeat itself, as vehicle-volume reduction was not achieved; it even spawned corruption in car registration. Yet, until today, the government insists on further expanding the coverage of the prohibition, closing its mind to other more effective ways to solve traffic congestion.
Raising the stakes a bit, there’s this section in the 1987 Constitution that imposes term limits on local officials and members of Congress. Noble was the intent — to prevent the rise of political dynasties who control political power in a town, in a province, in a region, in the nation.
But the result was far from what the framers of the Constitution intended; in fact, the reverse happened.
Before the 1987 Constitution, we had one or two politicians in a family serving for 20 to 30 years as a member of Congress, a governor or vice, a mayor or vice, or a member of local legislative assemblies. But when they were told that they could no longer serve more than nine years, they had to find a way to go around the prohibition and stay in power. So, they fielded their spouses, children, parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles and aunts (even though they hardly qualified) to take their posts for a term until they could run again and retake the position. Worse, they ran for another position while turning over their previous post to any of their relatives. Worse than worse, they fielded their entire families for every post available so they ended up controlling most if not all of the powerful positions in their town, province, and region. So instead of just thin (or vertical political dynasties) we now have them in combination with fat (or horizontal dynasties) and there’s nothing we can do about them—unless we revise the Constitution and impose a self-implementing ban.
It is quite likely such an unintended consequence never occurred when members of the 1986 Constitutional Commission wrote the constitution.
I’ve always believed that laws should first be constructive before being punitive. They must give rewards for good, correct behavior and not just penalize bad or wrong behavior. They must be able to build something good out of anything or any act that they seek to prohibit.
But I guess we—particularly those we elect to public office to govern our lives—have not overcome one aspect of our so-called “colonial mentality.” Because this “don’t do this, don’t do that or else,” all-prohibition mindset is, to my mind, a carryover from the mindset of our colonizers. It was a policy mindset designed and intended to control their “slaves” rather than build them a good society. And it is a mindset that hounds us to this day. This explains why many of our laws are titled “Anti-this, Anti-that.”
Still and all, we see a silver lining, now and then.
In the fight against tobacco smoking, for instance, while the World Health Organization, through the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), insists on just demand and supply reduction to eliminate tobacco use, the Philippines opted to take a third track—that of harm reduction.
To be sure, harm reduction is also part of FCTC’s tobacco-control arsenal. But over the years since 2005, the WHO-FCTC has chosen to put harm reduction on the sidelines, focusing its efforts on supply and demand reduction, and compelling FCTC parties to follow its lead.
The Philippine Congress in 2022 enacted Republic Act 11900 to regulate the importation, manufacture, sale, packaging, distribution, use and communication of vaporized nicotine and non-nicotine products and novel tobacco products. These products are less-harmful alternatives to cigarettes because they don’t involve burning tobacco—which is what multiplies tobacco’s harm to health. They also help smokers to eventually give up the habit.
It cannot be denied that since the Philippines adopted stringent anti-smoking rules and regulations, smoking prevalence has gone down. The Department of Health reports that tobacco use among adult Filipinos has dropped from 23.8% in 2015 to 19.5% in 2021.
But numbers are like a pair of bikinis. They reveal what is obvious but conceal what is vital. It is obvious in this case that percentage-wise, the reduction may be significant. But behind the percentages, the absolute numbers tell a different story.
We had 58.73 million adult population in 2015. If 23.8% of them smoked then, that’s 13,977,740 smokers. In 2021, the percentage of smokers had gone down to 19.5. But the adult population was estimated at 68.43 million. That meant there were 13,343,850 smokers six years after, a reduction of barely 633,890 over the period. Only 158,472 smokers ditched the habit every year.
So, our policymakers perhaps realized that were things to remain as they stood, it would take us 135 years to eradicate smoking—and by that time millions would have died of diseases linked to smoking. And simply attacking the problem on the demand and supply fronts will—as it had—bring about unintended consequences such as rampant cigarette smuggling that threatens whatever gains have been achieved apart from costing the government billions in taxes that would have gone to health programs.
So, there could be wisdom in attacking the problem on another front—harm reduction, which has been shown in some studies to significantly lower the health risks associated with “burning” cigarettes and inhaling their smoke, eventually saving lives.
Will this barely-a-year-old policy work? Give it a few years and let’s see if the numbers change, like they have changed in a few countries that have dared defy the WHO prescription. What works in one country may not work in another. That’s why there can be no blanket formula for smoking and tobacco cessation that could cut across the globe.
Smoking and tobacco regulation is one area where the world and world governments may need to strike a balance because, as Benjamin Franklin said, “Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.” Governance and rule-making are all about balancing conflicting interests, costs and benefits, noble goals, and unintended consequences.
