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• HEALTH: Tobacco Companies Have a Field Day in Indonesia 

When it comes to smoking, Indonesia remains the last paradise for a puff in Southeast Asia. Those addicted to cigarettes can openly light up in public places without worrying about tough anti-tobacco penalties found in the rest of the region.

This reality has been shaped by the power of local and multinational tobacco companies on the archipelago of some 224 million people.

At the finals for the recent ‘Mild Live Wanted 2009' countrywide talent contest, in the former colonial city of Bandung, competing musicians belted out their songs from around 3 p.m till midnight.

For Indonesia's small, yet vocal, anti-tobacco activists, these concerts - billed to promote local talent - offered more than music to fill their ears. They were the latest in a string of publicity drives of the powerful multinational tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI) in the country. . . .

The prospect of more deaths from this ”smoking epidemic” has still to move Jakarta, which is still to sign the world's first public health treaty - the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which has been in force since early 2005.

By contrast, this treaty has been signed by Indonesia's nine neighbours in the region, which include Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. . . .

But in other forms of entertainment, the publicity for tobacco companies are more direct, revealed Kania during a telephone interview from Jakarta. ”There was a film for teenagers last year where one of the actresses, who is still in junior high school, was smoking in scenes.”

Such an effort to glamorise smoking goes to extremes, at times. ”There are so many scenes of people smoking in Indonesian movies where the camera even zooms in to show the cigarette brand,” adds Kania. ”There is no regulation like in other countries.”

It is little wonder why a regional anti-tobacco lobby has described Southeast Asia's largest country as a ”cash cow” for the tobacco industry.

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Cigarettes in films must be banned: Commission 

The National Commission for Child Protection said Thursday that politicians had to ban the advertising of cigarette in movies.

"We demand that the House of Representatives insert an article in the bill on films banning cigarette promotions in movies," said Muhammad Joni, the vice chairman of the Commission. The Commission said the bill must forbid cigarette companies from sponsoring the production of films, ban scenes where actors are shown smoking and prevent companies from marketing tobacco brands in the film.

Joni said the current bill, if passed into law, would possess weaker measures on prohibiting cigarette advertising compared to the laws on broadcasting and the press.

"At least in both those laws, companies cannot display or broadcast cigarette products through their advertising," Joni said.

In the bill on films, Joni said, no article regulating the advertisement of cigarettes had been included.

The Commission has sent letters voicing their concerns and recommendations to the House and would try and arrange a meeting with lawmakers, Joni said.

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• 80 million a day: big tobacco's new frontier  

The Marlboro Man is alive and well, adorning bill boards around Indonesia.

David Stanford of the Indonesia Consumers Foundation says "from the tobacco company's perspective Indonesia is a paradise".

It's estimated that more than 80 million Indonesians smoke. Many favour clove cigarettes known as kreteks. They are immensely popular among locals.

In 2005 Philip Morris, the world's biggest tobacco corporation, bought Sampoerna . . .

So proud is Sampoerna of its legacy and history that it's established a tobacco museum. It's a popular tourist attraction in the east Java city of Surabaya, complete with guides offering personal tours and telling the story of how a nation became hooked on kreteks.

With more nicotine and tar than regular tobacco, kreteks account for 90 per cent of the hundreds of billions of cigarettes sold in Indonesia each year. . . .

In Indonesia there are precious few rules and regulations. And unlike in western countries there are fewer restrictions on advertising. Television, cinemas, magazines, billboards, sporting events and concerts all flog tobacco.

In recent years, pop stars Mariah Carey and Alicia Keys have had their names associated with cigarettes. Marketing campaigns aggressively target the young as companies strive to increase sales.

In Indonesia advertising encourages young people to believe that smoking is 'cool!' Ujang Widodo is typical of millions of Indonesians who took up smoking as a teenager.

"There were cigarette advertisements shown during a movie show at the soccer field one night," he said.

"I bought one pack first, then continued buying. . . .

Yet the President's brief boyhood home Indonesia remains, along with North Korea, the only country to shun the World Health Organisation's treaty on Tobacco Control, a treaty that would impose severe restrictions on advertising and ban tobacco sales to youngsters.

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• Smoking May Worsen Malnutrition In Developing Nations 

A new study finds that smokers in rural Indonesia finance their habit by dipping into the family food budget--which ultimately results in poorer nutrition for their children. The findings suggest that the costs of smoking in the developing world go well beyond the immediate health risks, according to authors Steven Block and Patrick Webb of Tufts University.

The study is published in the October issue of Economic Development and Cultural Change.

Using surveys of 33,000 mostly poor households in Java, Indonesia, the researchers found that the average family with at least one smoker spends 10 percent of its already tight budget on tobacco. Sixty-eight percent of a smoking family's budget goes to food, and 22 percent for non-food, non-tobacco purchases. The average non-smoking family, on the other hand, spends 75 percent of its income on food and 25 percent for non-food items.

"This suggests that 70 percent of the expenditures on tobacco products are financed by a reduction in food expenditures," the researchers write. . . .

The decrease in child nutrition associated with a parent who smokes is "an intuitive but rarely documented empirical finding," the researchers write.

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The combination of direct health threats from smoking coupled with the potential loss of [food] consumption among children linked to tobacco expenditure presents a development challenge of the highest order.
Steven A. Block and Patrick Webb. Up in Smoke: Tobacco Use, Expenditure on Food, and Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 58:1. (October 2009)

• How much did you earn today? How much for your cigarettes? 

Iwan is just one case in the Health Ministry’s data, which shows that 34 percent of citizens more than 15 years old are smokers. The figure is enough to put Indonesia in the world’s top three in terms of the number of smokers, trailing only China and India.

A 2007 study by the Indonesian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (IFPPD, found that 12 million heads of poor families smoke more than 10 cigarettes a day. With more than 60 percent of the Indonesian labor force currently working in the informal sector, more effort should be put into running anti-smoking campaigns for this group, Soekidjo Notoadmodjo, a professor of public health at the University of Indonesia, said.

“Unlike those who work in offices, people who work in the informal sector, like street vendors or public minivan drivers, are not tied down to particular work schedules or regulations,” he said. “Having flexible working hours, and sometimes excessive spare time, they simply consider smoking as a way to kill time and alleviate boredom.”

Bambang Setiaji, an official at the Health Ministry’s Health Promotion Center, said anti-smoking campaigns would be more effective if they shifted away from health reasons and focused on economic concerns. . . .

“It would be more convincing if we told them [the smokers] they could buy a healthy meal for their family instead of a pack of cigarettes,” he said.

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• Special Report: Who's trying to kill the tobacco bill? 

A full-blown war to block a bill on the control of tobacco products is currently being waged in parliament, with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle's (PDI-P) Aria Bima forced to try and wrap it up before legislators end their term on Sept. 30.

Despite being re-elected for another term, Aria is worried, because the clout once wielded by his party will be far less substantial in the next House of Representatives.

Last April's legislative elections will see the PDI-P occupy 95 of 560 seats at the House, down from 127 seats after the 2004 polls.

"It seems my duty *to reject the bill* will be more difficult *in the next term*, with only a small number of legislators from our party in the House," he says. . . .

In 2008, 220 legislators agreed to deliberate the bill, in response to the government's signing of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) along with 175 other countries in 2003. . . .

tobacco farmers have visited the House several times to protest the bill.

However, most legislators who support the bill say such protests are engineered by cigarette companies to draw public sympathy.

Hakim Sorimuda Pohan, from the Democratic Party, claims the farmers are being manipulated by cigarette companies. . . .

Tobacco farmers and workers in Central Java admit the Indonesia Tobacco Farmers Association (APTI) has received support from cigarette companies to lobby the House.

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• Indonesia a paradise for tobacco companies 

When it comes to smoking, Indonesia remains the last paradise for a puff in Southeast Asia. Those addicted to cigarettes can openly light up in public places without worrying about tough anti-tobacco penalties found in the rest of the region.

Graphic: Tamiko G. Muhammad/MGN Online

This reality has been shaped by the power of local and multinational tobacco companies on the archipelago of some 224 million people.

At the finals for the recent “Mild Live Wanted 2009” countrywide talent contest, in the former colonial city of Bandung, competing musicians belted out their songs from around 3 p.m till midnight.

For Indonesia's small, yet vocal, anti-tobacco activists, these concerts—billed to promote local talent—offered more than music to fill their ears. They were the latest in a string of publicity drives of the powerful multinational tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI) in the country. . . .

But in other forms of entertainment, the publicity for tobacco companies are more direct, revealed Ms. Kania during a telephone interview from Jakarta. “There was a film for teenagers last year where one of the actresses, who is still in junior high school, was smoking in scenes.”

Such an effort to glamorize smoking goes to extremes, at times. “There are so many scenes of people smoking in Indonesian movies where the camera even zooms in to show the cigarette brand,” added Ms. Kania. “There is no regulation . . ."

“With 63 percent of its men smoking, Indonesia contributes handsomely towards PMI's profits—making it its fourth largest market in the world,” said the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA).

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• Indonesian Min: To Propose Closing Cigarette Indus For New FDI 

Indonesian Industry Minister Fahmi Idris said Thursday that he will propose closing the cigarette industry for new foreign direct investment in order to protect existing producers.

"The ban will be directed toward new (foreign) investors," Idris told reporters.

Idris added that his ministry will also propose six other industries, such as sugar refinery and pulp-making, to be closed for foreign investors.

Such a proposal will be subject to approval by the president.

There are now around 8,000 local cigarette producers, Idris said, and they are mostly small companies.

Phillip Morris International and British American Tobacco Plc (BAT.LN) are the biggest foreign investors in the industry and have majority stakes in two large local producers.

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