In Indonesia, Big Tobacco hasn't got a worry

[poledriver]

MANY people have seen the smoking baby on YouTube - the chubby, cheerful two-year-old from Sumatra with a pack-a-day habit. But Ardi Rizal was not a one-off curiosity. In the land of the child smoker, he is one of scores of toddlers and preschoolers addicted to nicotine.

Muhammad Dihan Awalidan is one. He's four years old, smoked his first cigarette at 2½, and gets through a pack of 25 a day. He started when he stole one of his father's cigarettes and lit it on the kitchen stove.

His parents, Iyan Ansori and mother Sulawati, are farmers from a hillside village in West Java. They know their son's habit is unhealthy, but feel powerless to stop him. He walks down to the local warung, or cafe, to buy his own cigarettes, sometimes staying for a coffee as well. If he's denied, ''it's like he's possessed, he really wants it'', says Iyan, who smokes a few cigarettes a day himself.


While the cigarette industry is beginning to lose its grip in developed nations - the federal government's victory on plain packaging legislation was hailed as an international breakthrough - health experts warn of a humanitarian disaster looming in poorer countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

''They [cigarette companies] are just wilfully imposing a pandemic on developing countries,'' says
Professor Mike Daube, a World Health Organisation tobacco control adviser and president of the Australian Council on Smoking and Health. ''They've known for more than 60 years that smoking kills. This is going to cause far more deaths than any wars we've ever seen.''

Dihan does not play much with other children, and doesn't say much to strangers. But when asked what smoking is like, he says ''enak'' - an Indonesian word which in this context means both ''delicious'' and ''it makes me feel good''.

Australia's northern neighbour is the wild west of tobacco. It's one of the few countries that has not signed the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which means there are few restrictions on advertising, warnings or smoking indoors. Outdoor cigarette advertising, footnoted by the mildest of warnings, assaults you wherever you go.

About 90 per cent of smokers here favour ''kretek'', clove cigarettes that are an Indonesian product and regarded by some with nationalistic fervour. They can be high in tar (39 milligrams compared with 16 milligrams for the strongest cigarette in Australia) and are sold in packets or by the stick. Some stalls set up outside schools to attract students.

Despite the preference for kretek, the Marlboro man - literally and figuratively dead in the West - is also alive in Indonesia. Global giants Philip Morris and British American Tobacco have moved in to Indonesia in the past 10 years, attracted by sales of a massive volume of cigarettes - 270 billion a year, and growing fast.

About two-thirds of men smoke either cigarettes or some form of tobacco, vastly outnumbering women because of cultural taboos. But young, smart, city women are now appearing in smoking ads, and some are beginning to break with tradition in pursuit of what Andika Priyono, an official from the country's child protection agency, calls the ''three Bs'' of modern success. ''BlackBerry, braces and black menthol [cigarettes],'' she told the Jakarta Globe newspaper recently.

Smokers in Indonesia are also getting younger. The University of Indonesia's Demographic Institute found that 71,000 Indonesians aged 10 to 14 were smokers in 1995. By 2010, there were 426,000 at least. Local cigarettes often have sweetened tips, making them taste like sweets.

The child protection agency, Komnas Anak, gave The Sunday Age a list of 10 smoking children whose names and histories it could confirm. It says almost 2 per cent of Indonesian smokers start at the age of four - a number that's rising. Even for the poor it's affordable, with a pack of 20 cigarettes starting at about 90¢.

Sandi Adi Susanto has been smoking since he was 18 months old. Every morning he asks for a coffee and a cigarette. He drinks alcohol too, if he can get it, and his parents believe he is possessed by the hard-bitten spirit of his late grandmother.

Continued at -

http://www.theage.com.au/world/in-indonesia-big-tobacco-hasnt-got-a-worry-20120825-24tlu.html

 

[thujone]

Welcome to the third-world version of "first world problems"

 

[ro4eva]

Crying shame how these big tobacco companies - in the name of profit and greed - are knowingly, in essence, killing countless Indonesians while lining their pockets full of more cash they'd ever need; and all they'd ever receive in terms of any form of criminal liability punishment or justice would be a slap on the wrist in the form of a fine they'd have no fiscal difficulties in paying. Yet switch the parties and substance in this scenario into a few friends who decide to roll and one of them ends up dying because they unknowingly bought PMA and the surviving users/victims would probably be looking at some serious time behind bars as well as mass media hysteria. These asshat corporations get off far too easy every time.

 

[poledriver]

^ Yeah its strange how they (Indonesian government) are so very strict on so called illegal drugs and yet they don't care about these huge tobacco companies rolling in money and killing the people, or addressing issues like all the under age smokers, and some so young, it's really disturbing and disgusting. They still have very cheap cigarettes over there, unlike here in AUS where the price has gone through the roof, turning alot of people off it, and all the ads and graphic health warnings etc. Our rate of smoking is going down and at its lowest ever I believe, and Indos is probably soaring. Pretty sad.

And the place is a fucking mess, the beaches are all disgusting and so polluted, most of the locals just dump their garbage on the beach and dont give a shit, the government doesn't seem to care and does nothing to address it either afaik, we have clean up Aus day and other initiatives to keep our beaches and parks clean, and over in Indo its all just getting worse and more disgusting. Its a shame on many levels over there. Kelly Slater said not that long ago via twitter it's the worst he's ever seen it, and he has been surfing it for along time, and its not just Bali either, its in alot of Indos islands now, so much plastic in the water and needles on beaches etc.

I've been there a handful of times, and know of stories of people being locked up for quite a bit of time for pretty small amounts of pot/hash or speed pills or ecstasy tabs etc. You have to be pretty mad to do drugs over there, it's too much of a gamble on your personal freedom. Ages ago we used to get magic mushroom shakes in a bar in Bali, Indo, before they became illegal, they were really potent and really cheap.