Jump to full article: Jakarta Globe (id), 2009-09-11
Author: Camelia Pasandaran
Intro: 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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