Duncan Graham, Contributor, Perth, Australia
Indonesian lawmakers and health professionals face a rough, tough fight to tighten the country's tobacco control laws, according to an Australian activist.
Professor Mike Daube, a 33-year international veteran of the battle against smoking, predicted a heavy campaign by the tobacco industry to protect its business.
""They'll be claiming a loss of freedom of speech and that sporting events and music shows will vanish without their sponsorship,"" he told The Jakarta Post.
""Our experience shows that's just not true. They'll use all the second-hand arguments that have failed elsewhere in the world. That shows a real contempt for countries like Indonesia.""
Daube, professor of health policy at Western Australia's Curtin University, was commenting on moves by 220 Indonesian legislators who are trying to butt out tobacco advertising and sponsorship.
The politicians have already been confronted by tobacco industry claims that millions will be thrown out of work if the laws are introduced.
The proposed changes, which include higher taxes and a ban on advertising, are based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Indonesia is the only country in Southeast Asia that has neither signed nor ratified the convention. So far, 168 nations have signed and 141 ratified.
Indonesia has a huge tobacco industry employing thousands. How many? Supporters claim five million, but independent researchers have not dissected that figure.
House of Representatives member Hakim Sarimuda Pohan, who chairs the committee drafting the tobacco control bill, has been quoted as saying new laws are needed to stop children smoking.
He claimed that in the past five years there's been a 900 per cent increase in children under 10 smoking.
Indonesia has some of the slackest controls on smoking in the region. Cigarettes are cheap, taxes are low, ads can be seen almost everywhere, and restrictions on smoking in public are widely ignored. Compulsory health warnings are minuscule.
Thailand insists cigarette packs carry gruesome pictures of the damage smoking can do to the body. Cigarettes can't be displayed in shops and must be kept under the counter.
Although sales to minors in Indonesia are illegal, the law isn't policed. The sight of schoolboys brazenly smoking in the street is common. There's even an open trade in tax-free fags, hand-made and sold in roadside eateries in East Java. These sell for around Rp 3,000 (US 30 cents) a packet, less than half the price of legal brands. The tobacco is apparently smuggled out of nearby factories.
According to 2003 research funded by the WHO and the American Cancer Society almost 70 per cent of Indonesian men smoke. The most effective ads link cigarettes with rugged masculinity and being ""a real man.""
The good news is that only 3 per cent of women light up, largely because the culture links smoking to prostitution.
In 1969 the average cigarette consumption in Indonesia was 469 sticks a year. That's now almost tripled. The death rate from smoking-related diseases is close to 50 per cent, with cancer and heart attacks as the main killers.
Daube was the first director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in the UK in the early 1970s. He moved to Western Australia in 1984 to work for the government and got involved in tobacco control. Later he became CEO of the Cancer Council.
Along with other health professionals he advocated the establishment of a foundation financed by cigarette taxes. This would replace tobacco company sponsorship of sport, the arts, community events, and fund health research (see sidebar).
Daube said that during his career he'd been served with three writs by tobacco company lobbyists. He alleged that a health minister who later went on the board of a cigarette company blocked his promotion in Britain.
He said tactics used in the past by the tobacco lobby included recruiting financial journalists to run stories claiming controls would trigger business collapses, and ""flat-earth doctors"" denying medical evidence of the health dangers.
He said the argument that tobacco farmers would go bankrupt were false. In Australia growers had shifted to other crops.
Daube claimed the tobacco lobby was now less effective because top professional people were no longer prepared to work for a discredited industry. However, the people who were now fighting against controls were probably ""tougher and nastier.""
""Tobacco companies are immoral and evil,"" he said. ""Smoking kills about half the known users. It's responsible for about 10 per cent of global deaths.
""The industry will claim it has a right to advertise because there's no scientific proof that advertising encourages people to start smoking, and that the product is legal.
""Newspapers and magazines will protest that they'll lose revenue. Sports administrators will say games will suffer. We've heard all these claims before and seen them refuted.
""Politicians, doctors and other health workers really have to get their act together and fight this menace. There needs to be a coalition of health organizations and professionals, and sports stars. ""In Australia the involvement of doctors in anti-smoking campaigns has been critical.
""Sadly, told that up to 30 per cent of Indonesian doctors smoke. There's no better ad for cigarettes than a doctor who smokes.
