The Smoking Dilemma in Indonesia

Smoking, one of Indonesia’s Biggest problems, a literally inexhaustible matter to be discussed, a dilemma that shadowing our life. Why does smoking always be something controverted? What does the benefit of smoking? Lets talk about this from its each point of view, whether the positive one or the negative one.

Firstly, let me explain about the negative side of smoking. Smoking is known as one of the causes of chronic diseases. Smoking has killed more people than the combination of other diseases such as AIDS, malnutrition, drugs, car accidents, suicide, alcohol, violence, and wildfire. Cigarette contains thousand of harmful ingredient like Tar, Nicotine, Carbon Monoxide (CO), and 7.000 chemical ingredient. Can you imagine it when all those poisons go through our body and settle inside for years?! It can cause lungs cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and many more. And hardly believe, all risks above will not only be obtained by the active smokers but also the passive smokers. 

Now guess it, how many people in Indonesia are smokers? A health expert, Prof dr Tjandra Yoga Aditama said there are 57.750.592 active smokers (link here). If one smoker smokes in public area and creats at least five passive smokers, how many people will be dying from the diseases? how many innocent people will be their victim? Ironically, most of the smokers are poor people. For them, cigarette takes the second place of their life priority after rice. They do sacrifice everything just for a box of cigarette, unpardonable sin!

Believe it or not,  the active smokers is also dominated by the youngsters. Global Youth Tobacco survey (GYTS) declared that Indonesia got the highest number of younger smokers in the world. In my neighborhood, many under age kids can smoke freely.  It seems like there's no age restriction, They can buy it in every store, and confidently smoke in public area without any worry.

Do you still remember how Indonesia’s ever been a hot issue when a six years old kid named Dihan Muhammad highlighted as the addicted consumer of this harmful thing? Awfully, at that time Indonesia stunned the world by this scandal (Link here). I couldn't believe, how did he know about smoking in such young age? When the other kids around his age were busy playing, this kid acted like an adult, prefer to stay at home, busy with his cigarette. And the worst thing was his parents couldn't stop him! i watched the video before, his dad was smoking 'together' with him. Right at that point, i realized, his environment was the one that can be blamed.

 Dihan Muhammad

By all those negative sides of smoking, everyone hopes this problem can be solved, and most people want all the cigarette factories can be closed.

I think it’s enough to talk about the negative sides of smoking, now lets move to the opposite, the positive sides of smoking that has been told by some people.

Beside being one of the contributors to the state revenue, cigarette is considered as a source of public revenue. Lets think, how many cigarette factory operating in this country? The presence of these factories help many Indonesian people to get a job. Not only the workers in the factory itself, but also for the tobacco farmers. Indonesia is known as one of the biggest tobacco producers in the world. Now imagine it, what will happen if those factories are forcibly closed? There are a lot of people will lose their job, their income. It will raise the number of jobless in this country, criminality will be everywhere, and creats other complicated problems that will be hard to handle.

But if we see it through the commercial side, it’s something that can’t be accepted no matter what. The data from Agency of Health Research, and Health Development of health ministry in 2010 showed that the outcome for this problem was 245,41 trillion rupiah. 138 trillion for buying the cigarette, 2,11 trillion for the cures of the diseases, and 105,3 trillion for losing the productivity. And the contrary, what we got for the state revenue form the tax was only 55 trillion rupiah (link here). Did we get the profit? Nope! what should we do now? do we have the solution?

A friend of mine told me the way to solve it, and i really do agree with her. But i warn you, we’re not the economy experts, this is just our opinion as ordinary people who try our best to help our beloved country so we can get out from this situation.

We assume what if we raise the number of the cigarette export activity? Can we emulate what Japan does in their economy rule? To be the great producer rather than the consumer? Indonesia’s tobacco is well known for its high quality. Many foreigners brought our cigarette home as the souvenirs. Why don’t we take it as a big opportunity? The tobacco fields and the factories will be operating well as usual and no body will lose their job. And of course there will be no problem with the state revenue as well.

For the internal matters, we should be more strict in curbing the consumers such as raise the price to the highest price so the under age kid can’t buy it. Here in Indonesia, the smoking rules are meant to be broken. The government has did many things to reduce the number of the consumers like doing the health education, giving the health problem pictures on the cigarette box, and even illicit statement of smoking which declared by MUI. But it didn’t work at all. With raising the price for 3 to 4 times we hope that the consumers will think twice whenever they want to buy it, and at least it will reduce their number of cigarette that they usually consume everyday. Does it make any sense? It won’t be as simple as it seems, but there’s nothing wrong with this simple opinion right?

In the end, this is just our unfounded opinion that came from our easy chit chat. As the passive smokers, we’re begging for mercy from all the active smokers. We just want to have a healthy life and clean environment. We always dream that our next generation will be free from this hell cicle which cradles us.