2 year old Indonesian smokes 40 Cigs per day: Anti-Smoking Efforts in Indonesia Set to Intensify

Under the terms of an ambitious government regulation now being drafted, all cigarette packs will have to carry graphic warning labels and will be prohibited for sale to minors, Bambang Sulistomo, the health minister’s adviser for health policy, said on Tuesday that although the tobacco industry was opposed to the requirement for graphic warnings, the ministry was adamant that they should be printed.

“Some of them have proposed that the pictures only cover 10 percent of the pack’s surface area, but we want 50 percent,” he said.

The regulation was supposed to be passed in 2010, but it continues to be stalled because of tobacco-friendly opposition. Bambang said the Health Ministry hoped to finish it sometime this year.

He said that in addition to the graphic warnings, the regulation would require that cigarettes not be sold to anyone under the age of 18 and would prohibit the selling of cigarettes per stick.

It is now illegal to sell to minors, but the law is not regularly enforced. The regulation would help strengthen enforcement.

However, the regulation does not address the thorny issue of tobacco advertising. Indonesia continues to have one of the most liberal tobacco advertising climates in the world, whereas other countries have banned most forms of such advertising. In the United States, for instance, tobacco ads were barred from TV in 1972.

Bambang said the problem here was that tobacco advertising was already regulated under the 2002 Broadcasting Law, meaning that any attempt to curb it would require amending the law.

Nevertheless, he said he was optimistic that once issued, the tobacco control regulation would prove effective.

“It will definitely have teeth. Hopefully we can finish it this year. It’s just a matter of getting all stakeholders in line,” he said.

Mardiyah Chamim, co-author of “A Giant Pack of Lies,” a book that seeks to uncover the marketing and lobbying practices of the country’s powerful tobacco industry, said it was clear that the tobacco industry’s advertising strategies in Indonesia had been successful.

She said they included questionable strategies such as failing to be completely honest about the health impacts of smoking, as well as ads equating smoking with manly characteristics, similar to the Marlboro Man ads from the 1950s and ’60s.

R.T.S. Masli, from digital advertising consultancy Pressmart, said tobacco advertising in Indonesia was highly pervasive and the required health warnings tacked onto them were often too small or fleeting for people to read.

“They’re very persuasive and they give no information,” he said. “And they’re very strong. The companies’ advertising spending is huge.”

The video below, shows us the effect of smoking lifestyle for Indonesian children.

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