Tobacco war rages on ahead of treaty

Tobacco war rages on ahead of treaty

Santi W.E. Soekanto, Journalist, Geneva

Indonesian smokers will soon have to pay more for their habit due to a new government regulation that will increase cigarette prices by between Rp 25 to Rp 75 a stick -- a move that is said to be threatening the industry and signifying a new stage in the "tobacco trade or health" dilemma facing the country.

Some health campaigners may have cheered, believing increased prices will reduce the consumption of tobacco, which kills 4.9 million people per year. More cheering may have come from the government because the new price scheme is part of its move to obtain more revenue from the tobacco excise. Under the proposed 2003 budget, excise revenue will be Rp 27.76 trillion, up from Rp 22.3 trillion in the previous year.

The unhappy parties include tobacco growers and those who have been profiting greatly from the industry. While delegates gathered on Oct. 25 at the World Health Organization (WHO)- sponsored negotiations on the first global anti-smoking treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) had ended its fifth Intergovernmental Body Negotiations (INB5) in Geneva.

At the same time, a much smaller delegation of farmers and officials from the tobacco plantation center of Temanggung, Central Java, were preparing to come to Jakarta to protest a government policy they thought was harming their interests.

The farmers -- part of some 78,000 tobacco growers tilling the "green gold" of Temanggung -- demanded the revocation of two government regulations on tobacco and health, issued in 1999 and 2000 respectively, the halving of the tobacco excise from the current 40 percent and a ban on the import of tobacco.

"Following the failed crop of 2002, we can no longer buy fertilizer or seeds, and we cannot pay our farmhands or our debts," said Sudjarwo, the head of the tobacco growers, in a statement delivered to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. "Within the next two months, more farmers will face hunger, even suicide, stress and heart problems.

"This excessively high tobacco excise will affect the cigarette manufacturers' purchase of tobacco leaves and cloves. This will systematically destroy Indonesia's tobacco growers," he said.

The farmers' fears of reduced consumption and, hence, a lower demand from cigarette producers, were acknowledged by officials fighting to curb the tobacco epidemic.

Sources at the Ministry of Health, however, said the farmers could not have taken up the fight without the backing of the cigarette producers and the support of profiteers among the decisionmakers at the House of Representatives (DPR) and relevant government agencies.

"It's likely that those farmers' demands for the abolition of the government regulation, backed by the tobacco firms, will also be supported by some vested interests in the DPR," said a health official. "Really, for the tobacco firms, the sky is the limit."

A DPR session has reportedly been planned to discuss the demand for the revocation of the government regulations due to intense lobbying by tobacco firms.

Djoko Susanto of Indonesia's cigarette producer HM Sampoerna Tbk said that the production of machine-processed cigarettes would be badly hit, although he believed the dip could be compensated by an expected increase in hand-rolled cigarette consumption.

At the FCTC meeting in Geneva, the Indonesian delegation came out strong in its support for tight regulatory measures against the tobacco epidemic.

Dr. Anhari of the Ministry of Health told the forum, attended by WHO Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, that Indonesia and its ASEAN counterparts fully supported the measures, such as the tobacco advertising ban proposed at the FCTC. In fact, the majority of member states attending the negotiations had supported a total ban on the advertising of cigarettes.

However, the meeting was actually about facing the giants themselves -- the international tobacco industry -- which pours billions of dollars into promoting cigarettes so aggressively that China alone has 300 million smokers, which is the equivalent of the entire population of the United States.

There are currently 1.1 billion smokers worldwide, some 6.6 percent of whom are Indonesians, all contributing to the coffers of firms, such as US Philip Morris International and any other company that makes its living from telling the world's population that it is cool and trendy to smoke.

Philip Morris International admitted in its comments at the FCTC that it "agrees that smoking causes fatal diseases, including lung cancer, and is addictive".

"We believe all governments should mandate health warnings to that effect on all tobacco product packages sold to consumers. We also recognize that public health authorities around the world have concluded that exposure to tobacco smoke causes diseases in non-smokers," said the world's largest cigarette producer.

However, it insisted: "Tobacco consumption is a legitimate decision adults should be free to make despite the risks".

The giants are fighting back attempts to curb the smoking epidemic, and a war, bloodless as it is, is now taking place.

In the negotiations that began on Oct. 14, the United States, Germany and Japan, home to some of the world's largest tobacco companies, came out with a firm rejection to demands to ban advertising and raise prices, which the WHO saw as the two most effective ways of bringing about a quick and sharp cut in consumption.

The United States, backed by Germany and Japan, said it could not support a treaty that either called for an outright ban on advertising or that even urged one. "This is a red-line issue for us. A revision is necessary," the head of the U.S. delegation, referring to the wording of a draft text, told Reuters.

Washington has said an advertising ban would violate the U.S. Constitution's free speech guarantees. But health activists have accused the United States, Japan and Germany of bowing to industry pressure.