Cigarette companies need to come clean on ills of smoking
Cigarette companies need to come clean on ills of smoking
By Michael Kibaara Muchiri
YOGYAKARTA (JP): Someone at the Ministry of Health is taking
home a paycheck he should not get. Some people at the main
private television channels are drawing money that they have not
earned.
Just sample the succession of images: A hotel attendant is
delivering an order from a customer. She presses the doorbell.
The affluent guest, who has been soaking himself in a bathtub,
slides majestically to answer the door. He opens the door but it
is not clear who is mesmerized. As he forcefully seizes the
"order" from the waitress and proceeds to walk away, lo and
behold, it turns out he is naked! The voice-over pronounces:
"Bentoel Mild. Jangan anggap enteng (Don't underestimate it)."
Or this one: An advert priding its product as the pick of the
plants used in its manufacture -- it specifically notes North
America and Latin America -- and argues that it is using the
egg's principle in making the product protective for consumers!
"A Mild" way of advertising a product that has been associated
with cancer and a host of heart and lung complications!
And this one now playing on a small screen near you: A driver
is caught between a shower and a herd of cattle. He first uses an
umbrella as he helps move the cows off the road, and the message
goes a tad fuzzy. If it were not for the announcement about Dji
Sam Soe, one would be lost as to whether it is a ranchers'
advertisement rather than one for cigarettes. Once again, no
follow-up health whistle blowing is evident in the Dji Sam Soe or
other Sampoerna cigarette adverts.
Then the big boys take over, or could we say the horses ride
off with the show? Against a background of country music, the
advertiser not only ignores the Asian lack of passion for ponies,
he boldly announces that his heroes are/were/will always be
cowboys. Let us give them credit. One of those Marlboro adverts
may show the best cinematography of any ad; the serenity captured
as the cowboy waters his horse. It is breathtakingly cool. The
only dent, of course, is the phony attempt to show some dangers
of cigarette smoking.
Why is the advert shy of a clear, lengthy warning that follows
all cigarette print ads? In the current Time magazine, Marlboro's
advertisement carries the boxed message: U.S. Surgeon General's
Warning: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to
Your Health.
Haven
When most countries are moving beyond irresponsible
advertising, it is ironic that Indonesia's airwaves are becoming
a haven for the ads.
Nowhere in the West would these tobacco crusaders get off
scot-free with such despicable advertising. It is tiresome to
watch irresponsible advertisements aired on the TV, even if they
are placed behind a tasteful smokescreen.
Initially you get lost in the vagueness that is emphasized in
these tobacco adverts. What a shame it is that this is happening
in the 21st century! How unfortunate that big multinational
companies largely support it!
The most astonishing thing, of course, is the conspicuous
absence of any health cautions against the risks associated with
cigarette smoking. No mandatory health ministry health warning on
the perils of smoking. Nothing.
And when some deign to include the health warning, it is
normally a flicker of a second, totally "toothless" compared to
the backdrop of lengthy, elaborate prosmoking statements. Unless
you are searching for it, the warning either never comes or is
obscured by its brevity.
That split-second "warning" is all that we are supposed to
make out of the efforts of the public watchdogs. It is so
contemptuously set; it is totally devoid of any deterrent by
telling of the true health ramifications that smokers must
contend with. As it is now, those subdued warnings are akin to
rubber-stamping a deal for marauding foxes to enter the chicken
coop.
It is a mockery when the "warning" is there in the first
place. The oh-so brief warning -- catch it if you can -- may seem
irrelevant until someone out there dies because the public's
watchdogs did not insist on each smoking ad carrying a clear
lengthy warning. The tobacco companies keep hoping that
Indonesians will not develop the consciousness to sue them, as is
happening now in the West.
The responsible public watchdog must come out in the open and
declare what -- or who -- is keeping them mum. In fact, such
officers of the government merit reprimands from their superiors,
if not a cut in pay.
Be it as it may, tobacco adverts have gone to bizarre lengths
in a bid to reach consumers. Why? Why are they no longer trying
straight smoking on the television screen? Is it because they
know that unless they dupe their consumers, smoking would already
be a dead and buried industry?
The reality is that few cigarette adverts today make the
direct sell. They are torn between lying for the money and
putting on a health warning. Yet, whenever it appears, the
advertiser makes sure it is as brief as can be. Apparently, the
idea is to dupe the public that the health warning should not be
taken seriously. Sometimes, the warning appears detached from the
preceding advertisement as if to give the impression they are
unrelated.
No education
It is only fair that tobacco consumers know the risk that they
are putting themselves at and, by extension, the environment
around them. It is fair for kids to make cigarette-smoking
decisions if they have full awareness of the hazards that are
involved. As it is now, the cigarette industry is not providing
the education.
Smoking may be a choice that adults may make. Yet no one
should have the freedom to smoke in public places like on the
bus, in malls, classrooms, lecture halls or dormitories. Civil
servants should never be allowed to smoke in their places of
work. To allow unrestricted smoking would be to cause an upsurge
in involuntary smoking, where nonsmokers are exposed to tobacco
combustion products from the smoking of others.
While tobacco smoke in the environment comes through both the
mainstream (direct smoking) and sidestream (from the burning end
of a cigarette) sources, the active smoker is exposed to both
sources; the passive smoker's risk is lower. The vagueness in
adverts may motivate mainstream smokers to smoke more, but it is
a pity that the sidestream smoking renders us all vulnerable to
the perils that go with cigarette smoke.
So why are the public watchdogs all acting as if their hands
are tied? Why are they not pushing for tighter antismoking laws,
especially concerning public transportation vehicles, public
offices and recreational places like theaters and even
discotheques? Why are they watching helplessly as the health of
the nation goes to ruin?
The hope is that it is not one of those International Monetary
Fund or World Bank preconditions given in exchange for aid and
international investor attractions. If it is, then those two
Breton Woods institutions should start worrying about who will
pay back their loans because a sick nation cannot pay any debts.
Not only is tobacco smoke listed as the number-one contributor
to indoor air pollution (Veitch, R & D. Arkkelin, Environmental
Psychology), it has been shown to be related to cancer,
cardiovascular disease, chronic obtrusive lung disease and
chronic lung disease in the work place. What the tobacco
companies will never tell the unknowing public is that smoke from
a burning cigarette contains tar and about 4,720 compounds!
Cigarette smoking is reported to have a hand in or is a major
cause of lung, laryngeal, esophageal, bladder, kidney,
pancreatic, stomach and uterine-cervix cancers.
Indonesia, now a target of major tobacco multinationals, needs
to have comprehensive and elaborate cigarette smoking laws that
will protect innocent and ignorant passive smokers like babies,
nonsmoking women and men, as well as rid the public of this
malaise. Most notorious, of course, are the school kids and
adults who puff away on packed city buses. There must be a law
that can stop bus occupants, including drivers, from smoking
until they reach designated smoking-friendly zones.
According to the article Reform and the Cigarette industry by
H.W. Vriens in this newspaper on March 24, 2000, the director
general of the Ministry of Health estimated the cost of treating
smoking-related diseases in 1999 was four times as high as the
taxes the cigarette companies contributed to the state coffers.
The same article estimated that three of the top five causes of
death in Indonesia were related to smoking-childbirth
complications, heart disease and influenza/pneumonia. The report
put an average of 57,000 deaths a year in Indonesia which were
attributable to smoking.
Health warnings should be mandatory wherever a tobacco
company advertises -- the towering roadside billboards, the mass
media, off-road competitions and even every time a tobacco
company sponsors events like live coverage of soccer and boxing
(in the case of Djarum Super and Mustang).
As the curtains finally closes in on tobacco companies in the
industrialized world, the hope is that the dumping ground that
the developing world has turned out to be will still be able to
ward off this malaise.
Health benefits of quitting smoking overshadow the profits
from the industry. This role has to be emphasized by these
multinationals so that fairness is done and seen to be done. The
government should move in swiftly and enforce applicable laws
that protect consumers from unethical practices that would not be
allowed elsewhere on this planet.