More than 30 tobacco brands place advertisements and promote their products around schools, a survey by NGOs has shown
ore than 30 tobacco brands place advertisements and promote their products around schools, a survey by NGOs has shown.
The survey, which was carried out in 360 schools in five major cities including Jakarta, Bandung in West Java and Makassar in South Sulawesi, found that tobacco advertisements were found in shops around 85 percent of all the schools observed. Other means of advertisement, such as billboards, were found near one out of three schools surveyed.
'In Bandung, we saw a videotron tobacco advertisement placed directly opposite a junior high school,' a survey team member and researcher from the University of Indonesia's communications department, Hendriyani, said during the release of the survey's findings on Monday.
The survey was jointly conducted from January to March by Lentera Anak Indonesia (LAI), the Children Media Development Foundation (YPMA) and Smoke Free Agents (SFA).
Hendriyani warned that tobacco advertisements around schools had a direct effect on children's tendency to take up smoking.
'An estimated 70 percent of children start smoking after seeing advertisements and continue to smoke because of the advertisements as well,' she said.
Psychologist Liza Marielly Djaprie voiced the same concern. 'The advertisement is subliminal; the individual is exposed to the brands without being conscious that he or she is being exposed. [...] But the children don't have a mature enough thinking capacity. They're still unstable. There's also the false perception that smoking is cool,' she said.
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