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COMMENTARY: Don't thank them for smoking
Tobacco tax revenues are even larger than those from the country’s oldest foreign investor, copper and gold miner PT Freeport Indonesia, a minister has said.
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Smoking kills — but each puff of nicotine inhaled into a smoker’s lungs feeds the families of tobacco workers. (Shutterstock/-)
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moking kills — but each puff of nicotine inhaled into a smoker’s lungs feeds the families of tobacco workers. This is the dilemma that the government likes to cite. For a developing economy like Indonesia’s that struggles to industrialize, tobacco, the cultivation of which existed even before independence, is part of a way of life that few people, let alone smokers, can easily leave behind.
This is especially true when a country that is among the world’s five major tobacco producers has loose tobacco controls and is one of the largest markets, the fourth after China, Russia and the United States.
Tobacco tax revenues are even larger than those from the country’s oldest foreign investor, copper and gold miner PT Freeport Indonesia, a minister has said.
However, it is surely wicked to monetize people’s misery. It’s flagrant commercialism, a way to make a living at the expense of others, and in the case of tobacco it is not only money being robbed, but the most precious possession of all: one’s health.
If the government insists on the economic rationale, then people who are sick because of smokingrelated illnesses should not be seen as a burden on the economy. A recent estimate says that the world loses US$1 trillion anually because of people suffering smoking-related illnesses — a tremendous transfer to the healthcare industry.
Indonesia is not unique in its tobacco predicament. Other countries dependent on tobacco have kept the industry, but have adopted measures to control cigarette consumption. It is only a wonder that Indonesia, which has experienced a growing number of young smokers, is still reluctant to implement strict tobacco controls.
About 180 nations have ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which mandates the implementation of high tobacco taxes, smokefree public spaces, warning labels, strict advertising bans and support for stop-smoking services.
