A growing hazard

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.