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BAGUIO, Philippines – Long before Baguio won gold from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for keeping its public spaces smoke-free, the city was already telling people where they could not light a cigarette.
That story began in 1966.
Sixty years later, a succession of ordinances, tougher enforcement, community participation, and public health programs has turned what began as a smoking ban inside theaters and movie houses into one of the region’s recognized local tobacco-control programs.
The latest recognition came last September 10, when Baguio received the Gold Award at the second ASEAN Smoke-Free Awards.
It capped a remarkable run that includes a World Health Organization Healthy Cities award for the Smoke-Free Baguio campaign in 2021, a Bloomberg Philanthropies tobacco-control award in 2025, the WHO World No Tobacco Day Award in 2026, and, just days before the ASEAN ceremony, another WHO Healthy Cities award for the city’s use of local data to address health and social inequities.
But Baguio’s smoke-free story was built over decades, not around a single ordinance or administration.
When it all started
The city’s earliest documented anti-smoking measure was Ordinance No. 433 in September 1966, which prohibited smoking inside theaters and movie houses.
In 1974, Ordinance No. 596 extended restrictions to public utility vehicles.
The city widened the coverage again in 1989 through Ordinance No. 24, which included public conveyances, theaters, assembly halls, hospital rooms and corridors, government offices, and classrooms.
Restaurants and eateries were eventually brought under local smoking regulations, while later amendments strengthened requirements such as posting anti-smoking signs.
By 2008, Baguio had adopted Ordinance No. 8, known as the Comprehensive Anti-Smoking Ordinance.
It prohibited smoking in public transportation, government vehicles, accommodation and entertainment establishments, public buildings, public places, and other enclosed areas outside private residences and certain private workplaces, while allowing designated smoking areas under prescribed conditions.
The rules had become broader. Enforcement remained the harder part.
City health officials continued to push for stronger regulations and tighter controls on tobacco sales, advertising, and newer nicotine products.
But the major shift came in 2017.
Turning point
The City Council passed Ordinance No. 34, Series of 2017, principally authored by then councilor Joel Alangsab.
The Smoke-Free Baguio City Ordinance amended the 2008 law and went beyond simply determining where a person could smoke.
It covered cigarettes and electronic cigarettes, prohibited smoking or vaping in covered public places, workplaces, and public conveyances except in duly approved designated smoking areas, restricted tobacco advertising and promotion, regulated sales, and sought to limit children’s access to tobacco.
It also provided the framework for the Smoke-Free Baguio Task Force.
This is why describing Baguio simply as a city where smoking is “totally banned” is inaccurate.
Smoking remains allowed in certain private spaces and in designated smoking areas that comply with city requirements. The ordinance instead made smoke-free public spaces the norm and placed stricter conditions on where tobacco and vaping products could be used, sold, and promoted.
The city formally launched the Smoke-Free Baguio campaign in November 2017 and intensified implementation in 2018.
Enforcement eventually moved beyond city hall, police, and the Public Order and Safety Division. Community and district task forces were organized, while barangay personnel and other local enforcers were trained to help monitor compliance.
Baguio also treated tobacco use as a public health problem, not merely an enforcement issue.
The program included information campaigns, inspections, smoking-cessation services, school and community initiatives, and partnerships with government agencies, civil society, and the private sector.
In November 2018, the Department of Health, Philippine Economic Zone Authority, and WHO launched the Revolution Smoke-Free campaign at the Baguio City Economic Zone, bringing the effort into workplaces and encouraging smokers to quit.
The results eventually began showing in the numbers.
City epidemiologist Dr. Donna Panes has reported a steep decline in cigarette smoking in Baguio, although published reports have used different survey years and datasets.
One city presentation placed adult smoking prevalence at 31.9% in 2014 and 8.9% by 2022.
Among young people, local tobacco surveys showed cigarette smoking falling from 28.13% in 2014 to 5.29% in 2023.
Enforcement figures also moved downward.
As we reported in Rappler in June, violations of the city’s smoke-free ordinance have generally declined from the high levels recorded during the early years of intensified enforcement, although authorities continue to catch violators and confiscate prohibited tobacco and vaping products.
Recognition soon followed.
In 2021, Baguio received a WHO Healthy Cities Recognition Award for its Smoke-Free Baguio campaign under the theme “Sharing Clean Air: Committed to multisectoral implementation of smoke-free laws.”
The award recognized not just the ordinance but the involvement of different sectors in implementing it.
Four years later, Baguio became one of six recipients of the 2025 Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards for Global Tobacco Control.
The city was recognized under the “M” component of WHO’s MPOWER tobacco-control framework, which focuses on monitoring tobacco use and prevention policies. Mayor Benjamin Magalong received the award during the World Conference on Tobacco Control in Dublin, Ireland, in June 2025.
Then, in May 2026, Baguio was named a recipient of the WHO World No Tobacco Day Award.
WHO cited the city government of Baguio for sustained leadership in keeping public places free from tobacco and e-cigarette use through consistent enforcement, public education, and partnerships with civil society and academic institutions.
The honor came as the city confronted a problem that barely figured in its early anti-smoking ordinances: vaping.
Magalong has pushed for a nationwide prohibition on vape products, citing their health risks, particularly to young people.
“We clearly and explicitly stipulated [that] we are highly recommending a total ban for vape because of the serious health issues,” he said in June after authorities confirmed that marijuana-laced vape devices had been found in a Baguio school.
Health officials have also raised concerns about electronic smoking devices being marketed to young people, sold online, passed among friends, or designed to resemble everyday objects.
In February 2026, the city destroyed about P5 million worth of confiscated cigarettes and vape products accumulated since August 2024, including products seized from schools.
Fewer cigarette smokers, in other words, did not mean the tobacco and nicotine problem had disappeared. It had changed.
Beyond smoke-free Baguio
By September, another WHO recognition showed how Baguio’s public health work had expanded beyond tobacco.
On September 1, the city received the “Data for Equity: Informing Action, Improving Health” award under the 2026 WHO Healthy Cities Recognition Awards during the 11th Global Conference of the Alliance for Healthy Cities in Sydney, Australia.
City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit chief Donna Panes received the award on behalf of Baguio.
This time, the recognition was for the city’s barangay-level Livability Index, an initiative spearheaded by the City Planning, Development and Sustainability Office headed by Donna Rillera Tabangin.
The index maps disparities in health, social conditions, and access to basic services across Baguio’s barangays, allowing planners to see which communities face greater challenges instead of treating the city as one uniform population.
The findings are being integrated into planning, budgeting, and investment decisions so interventions and resources can be directed to communities where they are most needed.
That is precisely the kind of work the WHO award category was designed to recognize. The 2026 criteria emphasize using neighborhood-level and other disaggregated data to identify health inequities, guide policy and resource allocation, and turn evidence into concrete action.
For Baguio, there is a clear connection between the two Healthy Cities awards.
The 2021 recognition grew from years of gathering tobacco data, enforcing local policy, and bringing communities and institutions into the Smoke-Free Baguio campaign. The 2026 award shows the same evidence-based approach being used more broadly to understand how health and living conditions differ from one barangay to another.
Nine days after receiving the Sydney award, Baguio returned to where much of that public health story had begun.
At the second ASEAN Smoke-Free Awards on September 10, the city received the Gold Award, ahead of George Town in Penang, Malaysia, which received silver.
Baguio became the second Philippine city to win the ASEAN smoke-free gold after Iloilo City took the top award in the inaugural competition in 2024.
The gold does not mean the work is finished.
People are still caught smoking where they should not. Vape products have created new enforcement and health challenges, particularly among the young. Online selling and constantly changing product designs have made regulation more difficult than when Baguio’s first anti-smoking ordinance was written.
Still, the distance between 1966 and 2026 is worth remembering.
Baguio’s ASEAN gold did not begin with the 2017 ordinance, the launch of a campaign, or an international award.
It began with a much narrower rule six decades ago telling people not to smoke inside theaters and movie houses.
Today, the laws are broader, the evidence is better, and the challenge includes products that did not exist when the city started.
The basic idea remains remarkably simple: the air people share is also a matter of public health. – Rappler.com
