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Govt told to increase tobacco taxes
Activists say the government should raise tobacco taxes to place more pressure on people from low-income brackets to quit smoking
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Activists say the government should raise tobacco taxes to place more pressure on people from low-income brackets to quit smoking.
'The government should control tobacco use through tax increases, ensuring that cigarettes are affordable only for people from middle- and upper-class economic backgrounds, most of whom more higher awareness about the negative impacts of tobacco on health,' they said on Thursday.
They were speaking at the 1st Indonesian Conference on Tobacco or Health (ICTOH) 2014 themed 'Tobacco Control: Saves Lives, Saves Money'.
The World Health Organization (WHO), together with the Indonesia Tobacco Control Network, the Tobacco Control Support Center, the Indonesian Public Health Experts Association and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases, is holding the three-day conference that will end on Saturday.
It was also said during the conference that young people, as the main marketing target of cigarettes and other tobacco products, should be involved in efforts to prevent tobacco use.
The conference's organizing committee chairman, Kartono Mohamad, said cigarette companies had targeted young people as their long-term potential consumers, thus, the youth should play a more active role in tobacco control.
'They have become a target of cigarette smoking, but they can control it through peer pressure,' he said.
Kartono further said such groups could push smoke-free campaigns by pressuring other people to not smoke in public areas or ensuring that sports or any other activities that attracted youths were held without tobacco sponsorship.
Surveys estimate around 6.9 million people would stop smoking and tobacco-related deaths would decrease by up to 2.4 million people if the government increased cigarette taxes to 57 percent from its current level.
Indonesia, which has been actively involved in drafting the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), is now the only country in the Asia Pacific that has yet to sign and ratify the convention.
The London-based International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases director Ehsan Latif said Indonesia could not separate itself from 177 other countries in achieving the same healthcare targets for their citizens through tobacco control.
"We strongly urge the Indonesian government to immediately sign the FCTC and join the global community to save its people [from the impacts of cigarette smoke]," he said. (put/ebf)
