New bill will challenge tobacco control efforts in Indonesia.

In 2010, a video of a smoking toddler in Indonesia went viral, showing the

extent of unhealthy addiction to cigarettes that the country has.
Five years after the shocking video surfaced, Indonesia is still behind in
tobacco control and seems to be regressing. Indonesia is the only country in
the Asia Pacific that has yet to ratify the international Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control(FCTC). The Indonesian parliament, intent
on pushing tobacco industry interests, is deliberating a bill that will obstruct
tobacco control efforts in Indonesia.
A burgeoning health problem
Around 200,000 Indonesians die from tobacco-related illnesses every
year. In addition, economic losses caused by smoking, including medical
expenses, physical disability, premature death and reduced working hours,
reach A$24 billion annually.
More than two-thirds of adult males are smokers in Indonesia. And
nearly four million Indonesian children between the ages of ten and 14 pick
up smoking every year.
Indonesians smoke 300 billion cigarettes in a year. Only China and India
exceed this number. A survey conducted in low-income populations showed
that cigarettes comes second after the staple food rice on the list of
household monthly consumption.
Tobacco bill
Indonesia has tried to set up regulations for tobacco control by introducing a
Tobacco Control Bill in 2010, the year the toddler smoking video went viral,
as priority legislation. Yet neither the parliament nor the government has
discussed the bill to this day.

Instead, in February the parliament has included in this years list of priority
bills new draft legislation on tobacco. This bill is completely different from the
2010 Tobacco Control Bill.
The

Tobacco

Control

Bill

was proposed

by

the

Houses

Health

Committee, while the new Tobacco Bill is submitted by the Houses

Industrial Committee.
Based on the final version of the draft bill, health issues caused by
smoking were not a main consideration.
The provisions are dominated by legal arrangements regarding tobacco
production and the tobacco industry. Although it includes a minor provision
on the protection of public health from the negative impacts of tobacco, the
structure of this bill shows that health issues are not the core of the bill.
Article 3 of the bill mentions five objectives of tobacco management. The
first four objective are to increase tobacco production, improve community
welfare, develop the national tobacco industry and to increase state
revenues. Public health protection purposes is mentioned only last.
Industry over public health
Enacting legislation that prioritises tobacco management issues will only
favour tobacco industry interests. It also gives unnecessary special
treatment to tobacco farming compared to other agricultural plants.
Whenever there are efforts at tobacco control in Indonesia, the industry pits
public health concerns against the welfare of tobacco farmers. Because
smoking is so ubiquitous in Indonesia, there is a perception that tobacco
control would jeopardise Indonesias tobacco farmers.
But Indonesia actually imports more tobacco than it exports to meet local
demands for cigarettes. In 2011 Indonesia imported US$507 million worth of
tobacco and exported tobacco worth US$146 million.

Indonesia does not need a dedicated bill for tobacco. Compared to other
agricultural plants, tobacco plantations are not spread out in Indonesias 34
provinces. They are concentrated in only East and West Java, as well as West
Nusa Tenggara.
Rice, in contrast, is evenly distributed throughout Java and other islands,
with a total production of more than 70 million tonnes in 2013.
Forget the Tobacco Bill, adopt the FCTC
The Indonesian government should scrap the Tobacco Bill. The substance of
the bill is not in line with the governments efforts in protecting public health.
Indonesia has a 2009 Health Law that classifies tobacco as an addictive
substance of which the production, distribution and use needs to be
controlled. In 2012, Indonesia enacted a government regulation to control
the health impact of tobacco products. This regulation, among other things,
requires cigarette manufacturers to include pictorial health warnings on 40%
of the space on every tobacco products packaging.
The government should accede to the Framework Convention on Tobacco
Control (FCTC) and ratify it into national law.
If Indonesia continues to delay FCTC accession, the country will become a
dumping ground for cigarette industries as more and more countries become
parties to the FCTC. Even China, the worlds largest tobacco producer, has
ratified the FCTC.
As Indonesia has rolled out its health-care system, in the long term the
government will have to deal with the high health costs of smoking.
President Joko Widodo can improve his declining popularity by scrapping
the tobacco bill and ratifying the FCTC. More importantly, this move will save
future generations of Indonesians from the grip of tobacco industries.