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Discourse: RI needs to tighten tobacco control, raise excise, ban social media ads
The Jakarta Post contributor Rita Widiadana spoke by video link with University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC) professor Jeffrey Drope, the lead author of the Tobacco Atlas, a worldwide public health report.
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Workers roll cigarettes at a factory in Surabaya, East Java, in this file photo taken in August 2016. (thejakartapost.com/Wahyoe Boediwardhana)
O
n May 18, Vital Strategies and the University Illinois in Chicago (UIC) released the seventh edition of the Tobacco Atlas, which compiles, validates and interprets global- and country-level data from multiple sources to build a holistic picture of tobacco use, tobacco control and the tobacco industry’s activities around the world – including in Indonesia. The Jakarta Post contributor Rita Widiadana spoke by video link with Jeffrey Drope, the report’s lead author and UIC research professor for public health, on the Indonesian situation. The following are excerpts from the interview:
Question: The report says that global smoking rates dropped from 22.6 percent in 2007 to 19.6 percent in 2019. For Indonesia and other countries with a heavy smoking burden, the same drop in smoking rates is probably not happening. What is your opinion on this?
Answer: Indonesia has the third-highest number of smokers after China and India. With a smoking prevalence of over 33 percent of its 257 million population, an urgent and sustained effort is needed to aggressively regulate this harmful industry and its products to accelerate the end of cigarettes as a mass consumer product, save hundreds of millions of lives and spur economic growth.
For the first time on record, global smoking rates dropped, from 22.6 percent in 2007 to 19.6 percent in 2019. But uneven and anemic implementation of tobacco control measures means that richer countries are unlocking the economic and health benefits of strong tobacco control, while the industry is still preying on emerging economies in ways that will lock in harms for a generation or more.
Global tobacco users stand at 1.3 billion; smoking among young teens ages 13 to 15 has increased in 63 countries. Indeed, the data show that adult smoking prevalence increased between 1990 and 2019 in Indonesia.
