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t has been 10 years since the Jakarta administration issued the gubernatorial regulation on smoking prohibition and although the implementation has been quite successful at several types of places, it has faced a real challenge in public places with restaurants and cafés.

A recent incident during which a mother of two was involved in an argument with a smoker over a seating area in a J.CO café in Pluit Village, North Jakarta, has sparked outrage among residents over the poor implementation of Gubernatorial Regulation No. 75/2005 (revised by Gubernatorial Regulation No. 88/2010) at malls.

Elysabeth Ongkojoyo started a petition at change.org, asking Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama about the smoking ban in public spaces. She said she was sitting with her baby inside the café when a smoker entered and demanded she move because he wanted to smoke and he did not want to puff on his cigarette near her. She did not want to move, but the smoker harassed her with rude words, according to the petition. The argument attracted employees and the manager of the J.CO, who just stood by silently, according to Elysabeth. She asked the management whether the place where she was sitting was a smoking area, to which the management said no. She also asked the management whether the smoking ban was lifted, to which the management also answered no.

After the incident, the Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) visited the mall and gave it a warning letter. J.CO management in that mall also put up a sign saying, '€œThis is a smoke free area.'€

However, J.CO at Pluit Village is not the only establishment seemingly ignorant of the ban. On the heels of the incident being publicized, the BPLHD revealed that 90 percent of malls in the capital had broken the regulations by letting smokers light cigarettes inside the buildings. The 2010 regulation stipulates that public places, including malls, can provide smoking areas that have to be outside and physically separate from the main building and far from an entrance or exit. Before the revision, restaurants and cafés could provide isolated smoking areas inside the common room of the establishments and they only had to provide an exhaust vent for those smoking areas. The 2005 stipulation was deemed ineffective in protecting non-smokers because smoked still billowed into the non-smoking area.

Research, including some conducted by the World Health Organization, estimated that 35 percent of Indonesians are smokers. The percentage applies to Jakarta, meaning the capital has some 3.5 million smokers. In the eyes of café and restaurant owners, these are customers who smoke after meals, smoke while drinking coffee and smoke while having lengthy conversations, and they like to make more orders.

Consequently, the implementation of the smoking ban in public places encountered a hurdle because business owners must compete to serve customers '€” and smokers in Indonesia are notorious for their huge sense of self-entitlement, so that many get angry when security guards, restaurant management or other customers tell them not to smoke.

A security guard at Pondok Jati Station in East Jakarta, Muhammad Iqbal, had to be hospitalized in critical condition in April this year after he was beaten by a smoker who was angry at Iqbal after the security guard reprimanded him for violating the smoking ban on the station'€™s platform.

Not all smokers have a bad attitude. Some have proven that smokers can be considerate and comply with the rules. Elysabeth herself said her late father was a heavy smoker, but he always smoked outside the Pluit Village Mall when the family visited the shopping center. But such smokers seemed to be still in the minority and vocal non-smokers like Elysabeth were also only a handful.

This situation leads to repeated violations of the smoking ban by restaurant owners and mall management. After this incident they will probably lay low, but without serious enforcement, they will gradually violate the ban again. The unholy matrimony between inconsiderate smokers and profit-seeking businesspeople would hurt the mostly timid non-smokers.

The smoking ban is important not only because it protects non-smokers today, but it also has an impact that reverberates well into the future of our children, who will hopefully not smoke because of the avid campaigns their parents wage today. It has also helped several smokers who want to quit because the ban minimizes temptation.

The city administration needs to be more serious about the smoking ban, which is perhaps one of the most important regulations in Jakarta'€™s history. The lack of human resources cannot be an excuse to fail the health of non-smokers, mostly women and children. The gubernatorial regulation stipulates that monitoring is the obligation of several agencies, including the BPLHD, the Tourism and Culture Agency, the respective municipal administrations and the Manpower Agency.

The private sector must also support this policy by complying with the regulations while providing adequate smoking areas to appease the smokers because the smoking ban is not only about 3.5 million potential customers, but also about the 6.5 million non-smokers and the future of our children.