During the same event, Tubagus Haryo Karbyanto, member of the the Division of Legal Affairs and Advocacy at the National Tobacco Control Commission, reports that cigarette consumption in Indonesia is a significant economic burden to household budgets.
“Tobacco, the primary gateway and ingredient of cigarettes, remains a normal commodity in Indonesia. To perform tobacco control, we need to de-normalize cigarette products, corporations, and related behaviors gradually. In other words, to allow tobacco products to remain legal, but not ‘normal’.
Smoking tobacco is still legal because its effects are not as bad as drug usage. However, people who are addicted to nicotine are usually no longer able to control themselves. Despite being legal, in certain contexts cigarette companies do manipulate their consumers to use addictive substances,” Haryo said.
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Furthermore, Health Baseline Research data shows that Indonesian middle- and lower income families spend 19% of their income on primary groceries, 11% on cigarettes, 3% for health issues, and 2% on education.
“This spending pattern significantly contributes to stunting among our children. Cigarette-related health costs in 2015 were IDR 13.7 trillion – not counting the uncountable early deaths and loss of productivity. If we could have saved the costs to cover cigarette-caused losses into other health sectors, we would have a much higher quality of life as a nation,” he declared. (est)