COMMENT | Will banning the display of cigarettes really curb smoking? This began last month under a new law. To answer this, we need to look at what has happened in Malaysia before.

When Kelantan clamped down on four-digit gambling shops in the early 1990s, a senior journalist then laughed and told me: “Did you know that people in Kota Bharu now ask long-distance taxi drivers to buy 4D numbers for them in Jerteh?”

Jerteh is a town in Terengganu, just across the state border with Kelantan, which had not banned such betting shops then. Drivers made a commission on this “service.”

Some 20 years later, in 2011, the media exposed that gambling...