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n an effort to curb the increasing number of underage smokers, the South Sulawesi administration said it will team up with regional administrations in the province to prohibit the display of tobacco advertisements in areas near schools.

South Sulawesi Culture and Education Agency secretary Salam Soba said the province must impose tougher regulations regarding the display of tobacco advertisements as various forms of cigarette advertising, including billboards and promotional tobacco-price displays, were easily spotted in areas and shops near schools, particularly in the provincial capital of Makassar.

'€œWe admit that cigarette advertising, promotion and sales are increasing in areas near schools,'€ Salam said on Monday.

The South Sulawesi provincial administration issued a bylaw in June that prohibits smoking in public places, including schools, hospitals and houses of worship.

The bylaw, according to Salam, is not enough to curb tobacco advertising without support from regents and mayors in the province who have the authority to approve public advertisements in their respective jurisdictions as an alternative source of local government revenue.

'€œWe will send a circular to regents and mayors and coordinate with them [on this matter]. [They] must act firmly to prohibit the display of cigarette advertising near schools, as it has contributed to the increasing number of underage smokers over the past years,'€ he said.

South Sulawesi, one of the most populated regions in the eastern part of Indonesia, is home to 8 million people and around 7,800 schools, ranging from elementary to high school.

According to a recent joint study by NGOs Children Media Development Foundation (YPMA), Lentera Anak Indonesia (LAI) and Smoke Free Agents (SFA), Makassar and the West Java provincial capital of Bandung are the cities with the highest intensity of tobacco advertising near schools.

'€œTobacco ads and displays can be easily spotted in areas near 94 percent of schools that we observed in the two cities,'€ YPMA activist and Bandung Islamic University (Unisba) School of Communication lecturer Santi Indra Astuti of YPMA said on Sunday in Makassar.

The study, conducted from January to March this year in 360 schools '€” from elementary to senior high '€” in Jakarta, Bandung, Mataram in West Nusa Tenggara, Makassar and Padang in West Sumatra, also found that various forms of tobacco advertising were visible in areas near 93 percent of the observed schools in Mataram, 92 percent of the observed schools in Jakarta and 81 percent of the observed schools in Padang.

Commenting on the research findings, Makassar State University (UNM) psychologist Asniar Khumas, who has done extensive studies on the impact of advertising on local youth, said the tobacco industry had encouraged school-age children to smoke by running campaigns that depicted smokers as heroic figures.

'€œTobacco ads have greatly influenced youth perception toward smoking. Recent research, for example, revealed that 70 percent of youth have a positive impression of cigarette advertising. Meanwhile, 29 percent of respondents said they would light a cigarette soon after they saw a tobacco ad,'€ she said.

Various studies have shown that every year, 200,000 people in Indonesia die of smoking-related illnesses. The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) Indonesia Report 2011 said 40 percent of 13-to-15-year-old adolescents in Indonesia were smokers, up from 20.3 percent in 2010 and 7.1 percent in 1995.