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• Indonesia Seeks to Clear the Air Over US Kretek Ban  

Burned by the recent US ban on kretek cigarettes, Trade Minister Mari Pangestu said government officials would soon meet with their US counterparts in an effort to alleviate smoldering tension over the issue.

Kretek cigarettes were banned by the US Food and Drug Administration on Sept. 21 on the grounds that their sweet flavor encouraged young people to take up smoking.

“We will arrange a meeting and will be having consultations to seek a fair solution to this matter,” Mari told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.

The discussions, Mari said, are a preliminary response, but if no solution is found, then “at the end, it will be taken to the World Trade Organization.”

Mari said previously that the ban was highly detrimental to this country’s clove farmers and was in breach of WTO rules. . . .

Kretek International is apparently not going to take the issue lying down and is now seeking a declaratory ruling from the US District Court in Washington that its cigars are not cigarettes and can therefore be freely sold.

In its petition, it accused the FDA of “deliberately obfuscating” the definition of cigarette,” adding that “If a product is a cigar, it is not a cigarette, and vice versa.”

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Health Commission Re-elect Previous Chairman Amid Tobacco Scandal 

The previous chairman of Health Commission of the House of Representatives, Ribka Tjiptaning, of the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle, whose name has been mentioned in the report of the missing tobacco section in the new health regulation, had been re-elected to chair the commission for the next 2009 - 2014 term.

In the first meeting of the commission on Thursday, Ribka said "I have been officiated as the chairman."

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Smokers flout anti-smoking bylaw  

Many local residents were still seen puffing away on their favorite cigarettes in malls and other public areas as the Surabaya municipal administration started enforcing the bylaw against smoking in public places on Thursday.

Budi, a shopper at a mall, said Thursday he was unaware such an ordinance had been enacted last year in Surabaya.

Nor did he know that Thursday was the first day city residents would be prohibited from smoking in public places.

However, passive smokers and other residents hailed the enforcement of the no-smoking area and limited smoking-area bylaw.

They said they were "very happy" to have such a bylaw and hoped people would obey it to increase everyone's quality of life.

To promote and raise awareness about the bylaw's enforcement, a number of students gathered at several public places on Thursday in Surabaya, giving visitors candies in lieu of their cigarettes.

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• UPDATE: BAT Indonesia To Merge With Bentoel To Boost Mkt Shr  

Cigarette maker PT BAT Indonesia (BATI.JK) said Tuesday it plans to merge with sister company PT Bentoel Internasional Investama (RMBA.JK) in order to create a stronger entity.

"The combined market share of the two companies is expected to be around 8%," BAT Indonesia, a unit of British American Tobacco PLC (BTI), said in a joint statement with Bentoel.

It said each BAT Indonesia share will be exchanged for 7.68 Bentoel shares.

The merger proposal follows the 99.74% acquisition of Bentoel's shares in July by British American Tobacco.

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EDITORIAL: Lawmakers the butt of the joke in the tobacco war 

Over the past week, people have been amused, curious and outraged at the same time about the missing key "tobacco provision", which has become a subject of heated debate during the deliberations in which the interests of many stakeholders were involved.

It was a good thing that some former members of the special legislative committee in charge of deliberating the much-anticipated bill realized that one of the three paragraphs in chapter 113 of the finalized bill was conspicuously missing, while the bundle had already been submitted to the state secretariat for President Susilo Bambang Yudho-yono to sign into law.

The media detailed the sophistication of the omitted paragraph. T . . .

The lost provision singles out tobacco as an addictive and dangerous substance the use of which will be more tightly regulated under the law. This was a key issue that had survived bitter debates during deliberations of the bill because it would have wide-ranging ramifications on the multi-billion dollar tobacco business.

Advocates hoped the provision would account for a stronger legal basis for the government to better protect citizens from the danger of cigarettes and to reign in the tobacco industry. But critics, notably the tobacco industry, have always sought lenient laws that will not harm their business.

The omitted paragraph states, "The addictive substances ... include: Tobacco, derivative products containing solid, liquid and gaseous tobacco, which are addictive in nature and the use of which can cause health hazards to oneself and/or others".

After a storm of protests, the House assured the disappearance was all unintentional and that the "tobacco provision" has been put back in the draft bill that the President will sign into law. . . .

Although the House and the State Secretariat have assured that the missing provision has been recovered and reinstated, the laughing public will have to continue applying pressure for a criminal investigation into the scandal.

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• Witness and Evidence Prepared For Tobacco Lawsuit 

Lawmakers and government officials in the Health Department have been accused of conspiracy in the missing tobacco regulation in the recently approved Health Law.

An advocacy group consisting health expert, consumers rights activists, and the anti-corruption watchdog, Indonesia Corruption Watch held a press conference on Friday at the Indonesia Corruption Watch office, to announce that they have witness and evidence for their accusation in response to the "unintentional nature" of the crime by the legislative and the executive branch.

"It is already known who were involved and there are evidence for that," said Kartono Muhammad a health expert with the Coalition Against Corruption on Health Law.

A legal representative for the group, David Tobing, said he could not disclose the names yet to prevent allegation that the group is accusing certain people without legal procedure. He added that not all the members of the parliament were willing to be involved in the scandal, and said the witness had in his/her possession the written instruction to remove section 2 in article 113 which regulate tobacco in different form of substances.

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• Govt denies involvement in missing tobacco article 

The government has denied any involvement in the striking off of a contentious sub-article on tobacco in the recently endorsed health law, deemed an effort to protect the country’s cigarette industry.

State Secretary Hatta Radjasa said Tuesday the law, passed by the House of Representatives last month, was already missing the sub-article when his office received it.

He said he had contacted the Health Ministry and the Justice and Human Rights Ministry to settle the problem, and that the State Secretariat now had a complete version of the law, including the missing sub-article, to be signed by the President.

“The House of Representatives’ secretariat is lying if it said it received the law without the sub-article from the State Secretariat. That’s not how we send bills to the House,” Hatta said at a press conference.

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Tobacco in Indonesia to 2013 - new market and company analysis 

This databook provides key data and information on the tobacco market in Indonesia. This report is a comprehensive resource for market, category and segment level data including value, volume, distribution share and company & brand share. This report also provides expenditure and consumption data for the historic and forecast periods.

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Efforts to ban cigarette ads continue  

The National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) said Saturday it would stop its campaign for an end to cigarette promotion.

"The commission will continue its campaign to ban cigarette advertising. We are trying to push the health bill into law before the current House of Representatives members finish their term," said Cahya Shima Dewi, the commission's communication officer.

Cahya said the commission was still demanding that lawmakers impose harsher measures on cigarette usage through the health bill.

"The Komnas is pleading for a picture of the effect cigarettes have on the lungs, like the ones used overseas, be placed on every cigarette pack," she told The Jakarta Post in a telephone interview.

"The bill should ban smoking in public places and tax on tobacco products must be increased as much as possible."

The health bill was passed into law on Monday and contains only two articles on cigarettes.

Article 114 orders those producing or importing cigarettes to include health warnings while Article 115 regulates on smoke-free locations.

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• Cigarette Ads Upheld by Indonesia's Constitutional Court  

A split Constitutional Court on Thursday quashed a petition to ban cigarette advertising on television, rejecting appeals that ads could encourage children to start smoking.

In a five-four decision, the court said the petition filed by two child protection groups and two children was legally baseless.

“Cigarettes are a legal commodity,” Chief Justice Mahfud MD said, reading the court’s ruling. “For that reason, cigarette promotion should also be seen as a legal action.”

The National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak) and the West Java-based Children’s Protection Council had demanded that the court void an article in the 2002 Broadcasting Law that states that commercial ads may be aired by electronic media as long as they didn’t show cigarettes or people smoking. . . .

Judge Arsyad Sanusi said the Constitutional Court would be acting unfairly if it only focused on the negative impacts of cigarettes, while ignoring the views of cigarette producers, tobacco farmers, the advertising industry and other businesses related to cigarette production.

“In 2008, 400,000 people worked directly in the cigarette industry,” he said. “Meanwhile, there are 2.4 million tobacco farmers, 1.5 million clove farmers, 4.8 million [cigarette] sellers and 1 million workers in related industries such as printing and transportation.”

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EDITORIAL: Stopping Tobacco Ads Now Up to the People of Indonesia  

A ban on cigarette advertising is critical if we are to protect our young from this harmful addiction. Each day that we waver on laws regulating and banning cigarette advertising, many more people die from tobacco-related illnesses.

The Constitutional Court has made a grave mistake. Its ruling only hurts our children. Although the court’s rulings are final, anti-tobacco groups must continue to fight against the financial might of cigarette companies. There are still other avenues open, and other laws, such as those governing films and the media.

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Constitutional Court favors Broadcasting Law on cigarette ads  

The Constitutional Court issued a verdict on Thursday in favor of the Broadcasting Law that legalizes cigarette advertisements.

The verdict stipulated that cigarette advertisements would still be legal as long as the cigarette was not banned.

"We reject the request from the plaintiff," Constitutional Court chief Mahfud MD said as quoted by kompas.com

The plaintiff is the Children Protection National Commission

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• BOWRING: US Hypocrisy and Kretek 

Indonesians should turn their attention away from Malaysian theft of their culture to American maltreatment of a rather different national icon – the kretek cigarette.

As of October 1 it will become a criminal offense in the supposedly free United States to sell kretek, the clove-enhanced cigarette dear to most Indonesian smokers and increasingly to foreigners. Indonesia should take this behavior to the World Trade Organisation. The country which in the name of free trade has for decades ensured that its tobacco companies are foisted on the world has the temerity to ban somebody else's exports to the US. . . .

The hypocrisy of the US is stunning. According to a study by Frank J. Chaloupka and Adit Laixuthai for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the US in the 1980s and 1990s used Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to force open the cigarette markets of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand. "Estimates from fixed-effects models indicate that the market share of US cigarettes in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand increased dramatically after the agreements as consumers switched from the brands produced by domestic monopolies to the brands of US cigarette producers," Chaloupka and Laixuthai wrote. "In addition, simulations based on the regression results indicate that per capita cigarette consumption in 1991 in the four affected countries was nearly 10 percent higher than it would have been had the markets remained closed to U.S. cigarettes." . . .

In fact smoking disease patterns suggest that American-style flue-cured, Virginia tobacco with chemical additives which are the most dangerous cigarettes – certainly compared with the air-cured black tobacco ones such as France's traditional Gauloises and Gitanes.

The ban on kretek is discriminatory. One can be sure that if cloves were grown in the US there would be no such ban. As it is, Indonesians might think a reasonable riposte would be to ban all US-brand name colas until the kretek ban is lifted. After all, who knows what noxious substances are in Coca-Cola? The formula is a secret.

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• New council member named suspect in cigarette fraud case 

The Malang customs and excise office (KPPBC) has busted a syndicate that produced and distributed cigarettes bearing improper excise stickers, an official said Thursday.

The syndicate allegedly involved a recently-elected member of the Malang Legislative Council.

Head of the KPPBC's intelligence and execution section, Rudi Hery Kurniawan, said that during a raid held earlier this week the team had arrested four suspects and seized millions of cigarettes.

"The cigarettes were about to be shipped to Sulawesi when we seized them. They were heading to Surabaya's Tanjung Perak Port in two trucks," Rudi said.

The four suspects, Rudi said, were identified only as JM and, who were driving the trucks, S, who allegedly managed the factory and N, who owned the misused excise number.

N, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), was recently sworn in as a councilor at Malang municipal legislature. He owns the Dollar cigarette factory, which produces the Actor Super and DL Super cigarettes that were seized by the KPPBC.

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Public vehicles a safe haven for smokers: Survey  

The Jakarta administration’s efforts to implement a smoking ban on public transportations since 2005 seems to have gone up in smoke, as a recent survey by the Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) reveals a high percentage of violations.

The survey, in early to mid-July, showed violations in 89 percent of 549 public buses and minivans in the city’s five municipalities.

YLKI’s coordinator Tulus Abadi said Thursday out of 807 violators caught smoking in public vehicles, 348 were drivers, 320 passengers and 139 were drivers’ assistants.

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