A growing hazard

To smoke or not to smoke? A preposterous question to ask, one might say, considering that 6.5 million people die each year in Indonesia due to tobacco-related illnesses according to a 1995 socioeconomic census. By the year 2020, at the current growth rate in the number of smokers, smoking will kill some 10 million people in this country alone, health officials estimate. Definitely, smoking must be discouraged.

Research by now has established beyond doubt that smoking is hazardous to your health. So, why do people continue to smoke? There are several reasons. Cigarette smoking is somehow considered to be a "macho" habit by many Indonesians. It is a man's pastime, and its socializing effects are considered to outweigh its health hazards.

The primary reason, though, is of course that tobacco, or rather the nicotine in tobacco, is addictive. After so many puffs, the body's system adjusts itself to the presence of nicotine in the blood and starts to demand the stuff in increasing amounts.

For this reason, the government last year issued a regulation stipulating that each cigarette had to contain not more than 1.5 milligrams of nicotine and 20 milligrams of tar. But pressure from cigarette producers forced the government to retract this ruling only two months after it was enacted. Enforcing the ruling, the producers warned, would result in mass unemployment, since local cigarettes, which usually contain cloves, would not be able to meet the minimum tar and nicotine levels.

This argument, incidentally, throws light on a major dilemma that hampers the government in its efforts to lessen tobacco addiction among Indonesians. On the one hand, it well realizes the health hazards that smoking brings to the population. On the other, it still needs the revenue which the tobacco industry contributes to the state coffers. The Indonesian clove cigarette industry, after all, is one of the biggest tax payers in the country. Killing it would be to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Nevertheless, smoking is a problem that the government will have to confront sooner or later. In 1990, for example, Indonesians consumed some 2.7 percent of the world's cigarettes. Last year the figure was 4 percent. The habit of cigarette smoking is also growing faster in Indonesia than in the rest of the world. In the 20-year period between 1975 and 1995, the number of cigarettes smoked per capita doubled, from 500 cigarettes in 1975 to 1,000 in 1995. The question is, what can be done to stop or even reverse the trend, given the government's dependency on the tobacco industry's tax revenues?

One obvious answer, it would seem, is for the government to start taking a look at the social cost of smoking. How much money do Indonesians have to spend each year on health care and medication to counter the ill effects of smoking, and how does this balance against the tax benefits the industry brings?

In the meantime, the government could start in earnest reenacting existing regulations designating non-smoking areas in public places and workplaces and restricting cigarette advertisements. The idea is to gradually lessen the government's dependence on tobacco revenues. If this can be done, then at least a beginning will have been made in our efforts to reverse the rising trend of smoking among Indonesians. Given the statistics, it is time indeed that Indonesians start looking at smoking as a health problem that is seriously threatening the nation.