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recent survey conducted by Hasbullah Thabrany, a professor of public health at the University of Indonesia and chair of the university’s Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies, has sparked a national discourse by suggesting a drastic rise in the price of cigarettes to Rp 50,000 (US$3.80) per pack to effectively force smokers to quit. With the Finance Ministry playing down the possibility of such a move materializing anytime soon, the government seems to remain in a quandary between the need to boost revenue from cigarette excise and to protect citizens, particularly children, from the hazardous health impacts of nicotine.

Indeed the government, through a number of ministers, has signaled its support for the national tobacco industry. Then industry minister Saleh Husin last year signed a ministerial regulation on a 2015-2020 tobacco industry roadmap, which aims to double cigarette production to 260 billion a year in 2020 from the 2014 mark. Manpower Minister Muhammad Hanif Dhakiri, a smoker himself, has promised to protect agriculture-based industries, including tobacco, which employs around 6.5 million people, from tobacco farmers to cigarette sellers.

The fact that Indonesia up to now has shown no interest in ratifying the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), though gradually increasing cigarette excise and allowing local governments to enforce antismoking regulations, demonstrates the country’s support for the tobacco industry. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s statement that Indonesia should not ratify the convention if only to follow others indicates there will barely be any change to the government’s approach in dealing with this long-standing issue.

Indonesia, the fourth-most populous country, will remain a prominent tobacco market and safe haven for smokers at a time when tobacco sales in developed countries are nose-diving.

Critics have warned that the draft law on tobacco, which is currently being deliberated at the House of Representatives, reflects the strengthening grip of the tobacco industry on the government. The bill has undergone at least five revisions, which antitobacco groups say will fulfill the demands of industry players.

The recent Southeast Asian Tobacco Control Alliance report shows Indonesia as the country with the strongest interference by the tobacco industry in the region. Indonesia, the report says, is the only country in Southeast Asia where such interference is intensifying.

It’s very unlikely that the government will block the House’s move to pass the controversial tobacco bill, but the door remains open for civil society to have its concerns accommodated. Thabrany’s finding is just one of many voices that politicians and the government need to take into account, or else this nation will pay too high a price for failing to exercise tobacco control.

Even if policymakers turn a deaf ear to the warnings, any citizen who deems the tobacco law a threat to his or his family’s life has the right to challenge the legislation at the Constitutional Court. A law must save the public good, after all.