Antismoking promo targets youths

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Encountering the signs and badges announcing that "we only sell cigarettes to adults" while shopping at a Hero supermarket here, Heidy learned for the first time that the store now refused to sell cigarettes to children under 18-years old.

"What about to me? Will I have to show my ID to buy cigarettes too?" the 25-year-old woman asks the store's cashier. Sure Heidy is baby-faced, but will the cashier fall for it?

"No, that's ok ma'am I can tell that you're older than 18," the cashier promptly answered with a cheeky smile.

Beginning in March this year, about 90 of Hero's supermarket outlets across the country have joined in the campaign to stop Indonesian youths from smoking.

The motor behind this nationwide campaign, as unlikely as it may seem, is one of the country's biggest cigarette manufacturers, PT Philip Morris Indonesia.

"We are not in the business to sell (cigarettes) to children," Louis Suwarna, president of PT Philip Morris Indonesia, said in an interview recently.

He said it was the company's firm belief that children should not smoke, and to meet that target, it has launched numerous campaigns around the world to discourage minors from smoking.

In Indonesia, the company has launched the anti youth-smoking campaign in 2000, starting with placing stickers at grocery shops and small cigarette kiosks, as well as urging store owners to stop selling cigarettes to minors.

"To date we have placed stickers in 40,000 warung (kiosks) in seven cities across the country," the company's communications manager, Nina Soenoto, said.

Suwarna said that when the campaign was first launched he had expected a high rate of rejection from shop owners. Unexpectedly, most of those approached willingly took up the campaign.

Unfortunately there was no way of knowing how successful the campaign was.

"At the end of the day what we can do here is build awareness," Suwarna said, stressing the fact that Indonesia lacks laws defining a minimum age for smokers.

The campaign with Hero was further expanded to Hero's other subsidiaries namely 40 Star Mart minimarts and a Giant superstore.

"Through the Hero outlets, Star Mart and Giant, many consumers would be exposed to the efforts by our company together with the Hero group to prevent youths from smoking," Nina said.

At Hero group, the restriction goes beyond cigarettes produced by Philip Morris, but to other tobacco producers as well.

However, skepticisms abound, both in the country and abroad as to the reasons behind Philip Morris's worldwide anti youth- smoking campaigns.

Many say the campaign is just a ploy to alleviate mounting public pressure against the strong influences of tobacco companies with minors.

"If they really want to stop youths from smoking, they would cease production of cigarettes or at least stop the huge promotions," Azrul Azwar, director-general of health development of the Ministry of Health, told The Jakarta Post.

Impressionable youths are greatly influenced by the promotions that tobacco companies launch, and recognizing this vulnerability, they target these youths in their advertising.

At the 11th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Chicago last year, it was recognized the advertising ploys launched by major tobacco companies include sports sponsorships, and creating promotional items such as t-shirts and hats which turn the wearers into walking billboards.

Many times, the companies give free samples, using attractive teens to distribute free cigarettes to their peers in areas where young people gather.

Sponsoring live performances by famous music stars are also frequent, such as Iwan Fals by Sampoerna A Mild, British acid jazz band Incognito by Bentoel Star Mild and former Yess keyboardist Rick Wakeman by Djarum.

Chairman of the Coalition for a Healthy Indonesia, Doddy Partomihardjo, said that given teenagers' inquisitive and creative minds they would eventually find ways to evade the new ruling, just as they did with adult-only movies.

"It doesn't get to the core of the problem, children will only wonder why they aren't allowed to smoke and it could even increase their curiosity with smoking," he said.

Dody explained that a more effective way to instill anti- smoking was to approach children at junior-high school at a personal level like what the coalition had been doing so far.

The fact that the teenager is essential to the tobacco industry's future is highlighted in researcher Myron E. Johnson's 1981 report to the then Vice President of Research and Development of Philip Morris, Robert E. Seligman:

"Today's teenager is tomorrow's potential regular customer, and the overwhelming majority of smokers first begin to smoke while still in their teens ... The smoking patterns of teenagers are particularly important to Philip Morris," the report said, as mentioned in the website of the Washington-based National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids at tobaccofreekids.org/campaign/global/docs/advertising.pdf

Given that the continuance of the company depends so much on the next generation, it is rather odd that the world's largest cigarette manufacturer should launch a campaign against youth- smoking.

"We all know how huge the tobacco companies spend on promotion, I believe Philip Morris's investment in this campaign doesn't even reach a thousandth of its promotional investment," Azrul said.

The World Bank's Watching Brief May 2002 says that 6.6 percent of the world's total of 1.1 billion smokers are Indonesians. Another study shows that 70 percent of the Indonesian population, or some 141.44 million people, are smokers.

And the National Committee on Smoking Control said that one in two students aged 15 and older smokes, while 59 percent of all males aged 10 and older are daily smokers.