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Tobacco burning larger holes amid legal mess

Jakarta Post - June 14, 2016

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Jakarta – Indonesia, which has the world's highest prevalence of smoking, is facing an uphill attle to keep its burgeoning young population away from tobacco, an addiction that may in turn jeopardize its demographic bonus.

But the fight is proving hard to win in the face of massive promotion of tobacco products not only in conventional advertising space and the media but also on social media, another facet of life to which youngsters are also addicted.

The trillions of rupiah that cigarette makers spend on promotion every year, their powerful lobby in the government and the legislature, coupled with weak law enforcement make the effort to stamp out smoking ever harder.

At the highest level of policymaking, the struggle has been undermined by inconsistencies. Last year President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo laid out a strategy to significantly reduce the prevalence of smoking among teenagers over the next five years but then the Trade Ministry issued its own tobacco "roadmap" that will boost cigarette production to 524 billion in 2020.

Inconsistencies also reign in the House of Representatives. Lawmakers apply a double standard in their treatment of alcohol and tobacco, in favor of the latter although both are subject to excise as commodities that pose health and social hazards.

While legislators support strict regulation of liquor, they simultaneously back efforts to promote tobacco consumption and strengthen an industry that is paradoxically largely controlled by foreign companies.

A government plan to increase taxes as a way to push up prices as proposed by the WHO and National Commission on Tobacco Control has met fierce resistance from the cigarette industry, which contributes about Rp 145 trillion (US$10.9 billion) in taxes to the state coffers every year.

The long-standing calls for Indonesia to ratify the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control have also come to nothing. The Indonesian Cigarette Makers Association (Gappri) recently told Jokowi in a letter not to abide by rules prescribed by "foreign powers" at the cost of the industry and the 6 million people who rely on it for a living.

As the legislative situation remains messy, statistics from the Health Ministry and the state insurance scheme BPJS Kesehatan show a rising trend of tobacco-related health problems.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/06/14/tobacco-burning-larger-holes-amid-legal-mess.html.