Decades after evidence of smoking as a main culprit for various types of maladies gained traction, it remains a widespread, if slowly receding, habit for many around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 36 percent of men—smokers are overwhelmingly male—continue to smoke tobacco products. That percentage varies from relatively health-conscious Americas (23 percent) to inveterate Western Pacific (48 percent). The corresponding figure for Southeast Asia stands at 32 percent: roughly speaking, one man in three across the region is a smoker. Indonesia, where 76 percent of its men smoke, has the highest proportion of tobacco users in Southeast Asia.
Only with the 2003 WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) did Southeast Asian countries slowly get serious about tobacco control measures. Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines now ban smoking in public spaces—to varying levels of effectiveness—and all ten ASEAN countries have anti-tobacco regulations in place. Still, the tobacco industry remains influential as, for example, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, and Myanmar give preferential treatment to the industry through tax exemptions and other incentives. Moreover, in Southeast Asia, stricter rules on cigarette packaging regularly get watered down and tobacco products remain easily and cheaply accessible.
With the ubiquity of smokers in Indonesia and the tobacco industry’s significance to the country’s rural employment and fiscal revenues, it should surprise no one that the Indonesian government takes an accommodating—protective, in fact—stance toward the tobacco industry. As our first Spotlight opinion article this week notes, Indonesia, the only Southeast Asian country not party to the WHO FCTC, failed in its recent attempt to challenge Australia’s plain cigarette packaging law at the World Trade Organization. Indonesia’s partisan stance, the Jakarta Post argues, ignores the costs the tobacco industry inflicts on public health even if six million Indonesians depend on the industry for their livelihoods.
Our second Spotlight article presents an analysis from FT Confidential Research, the research service arm of the Financial Times, comparing the state of the anti-smoking campaign in the Philippines and Indonesia. Contextualized by data from the ASEAN Five countries, the analysis puts a spotlight on Indonesia’s unwillingness to protect its own citizens from the ill effects of tobacco use. Despite concerns regarding the way the Philippines clamps down on smoking, the country can now boast the lowest number of smokers in the 18-24 age group and the highest proportion of people who have stopped smoking, due to aggressive tobacco taxation and a strict anti-smoking policy.
The Philippine example is a good lesson in what political will can bring about in terms of public health. The fact is tobacco is an industry without a bright future, so it is bewildering to see Indonesia’s intransigence in defending the tobacco industry and, in the process, holding hostage the health of its citizens in pursuit of tobacco’s interests. Moreover, while shifting millions of people out of an obsolescent industry is not easy, delaying it will mean more complications in the future. Isn’t better health for Indonesians worth enough to their government?
