TOBACCO PORN

Selling smokes with smut           

                                                

Politicians debating a new Tobacco Bill might want to look at the way the addictive is marketed. 

Indonesia is one of only eight countries that’s neither a signatory nor a party to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.  That puts the Republic way offside with the 180 states which ban or limit advertisements promoting smoking, and prompts this question for parliamentarians:

Is the lawmakers’ priority the physical health of its citizens, or the financial health of the tobacco industry? 

Big adverts in public places linking a deadly product with good times and sexual prowess sounds like debauched Europe, degenerate Australia or too-liberal America - but surely not in upright, uptight Indonesia? Yet that’s happening.

Exposure of a workshop producing drugs to corrode young bodies would provide a feast month for the media. There’d be leaks to TV stations of raids, lurid details in tabloids pushing the limits of taste, and manufactured outrage.

The sleaze-masters involved in marketing by shooting the pix, hiring the models, writing the scripts, printing and distribution would be publicly hounded before being convicted.

Yet suggestive smut is on display right now and few seem concerned.  Transgressors have no fear of sudden bursts of Kopassus AK-47 fire; prisoners will not gulp cleaning fluid to avoid interrogation.

Instead the guilty continue to work in high-rise comfort, enjoy top salaries and get home early to their kids, for these people are nicotine promoters - a protected species in Indonesia:  The untouchables’ job is to boost Big Tobacco and ramp sales by devising ways to get citizens hooked. 

They do this by shouting loudly that for around one US dollar a packet consumers can find happiness, enjoy adventures, get great girlfriends and snare success in the boardroom and bedroom.

Their quest is to find the images and phrases which suggest these achievements without actually promising fulfilment.

The prominent, colorful and creative banners and billboards that flank roads in the tobacco heartland of East Java can’t be ignored.  They also mask views of Welirang, Arjuna, Semeru and the other mysterious mountains so create visual pollution - but that’s an issue for another column.

One of the latest slogans is ‘longer is better’ as though the use of English mitigates the offence. It’s a variation of the old saw ‘size matters’. Of course the ad highlights the length of the cigarette.  Don’t snigger; what other interpretation is possible? 

Other posters say ‘Don’t Quit’.  This captions a picture of a craftsman striving for perfection. Any resemblance to the internationally-famous term for breaking the habit and regaining health must be coincidental.  Cheeky, eh?

The ‘account executives’, as they call themselves to mask their grubby trade, are employed in an industry which is illegal in countries where governments prioritize public health.

Indonesia is so wedded to tobacco promotion that it took its big southern neighbor to the World Trade Organization in a bid to beat back Australian laws enforcing plain packaging. Supporting litigants were the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Honduras.

Although an official decision has yet to be announced, Bloomberg News has reported a win for Australia. (American billionaire Michael Bloomberg who co-founded the media group also funds an international campaign to cut an estimated six million deaths a year from smoking),

If the WTO decision is confirmed, Indonesian health authorities’ attempts to reduce harm from smoking will be strengthened.  So will the companies’ resolve to fight change.

Five years ago Australia became the first country to start plain packaging. Since then Britain, France, Ireland, Hungary and New Zealand have either followed or will do so soon.

Purchasing smokes in Australia today is like buying condoms half a century ago – an almost shameful act.  Locked cabinets are opened only on request.  The price of a pack will soon be AUD $40 (Rp 400,000), thirty times dearer than in Indonesia and a cost so high cigarettes are now a prime target for burglars.

The plain packaging law – which Indonesia and its three friends argued was a breach of trade rights - enforced bland brown wrappers with small brand names and horror pix of sick smokers. The packs look grubby, not something a sophisticate would want to flaunt.

Grim graphics are also required in Indonesia but the message Peringatan Merokok Membunuhmu (Warning – smoking kills) is tiny compared to the funtime images.  Even more blatant is the sponsorship of music shows by the tobacco companies. 

Because these don’t directly name a brand the alerts don’t get used. Elsewhere such promotions aimed at youth are illegal.  Indonesia has banned tobacco promotion in the mass media, and ads targeting minors.

This rule is ignored: The hipsters featured on the hoardings may be over the age of consent, but their antics, like racing on office chairs, are certainly adolescent. One slogan is barefaced: ‘Shape of New Generation’.

According to the Indonesian Health Department more than two-thirds of males over 15 light-up to look manly.

Indonesia is the fourth largest consumer behind China, the US and Russia. But while these and other heavy-user countries have signed the WHO’s Framework, Indonesia has yet to find a pen. 

Instead companies plan to double production so logically more deaths will follow. Current estimates start at 244,000 a year and rise to more than 400,000.  Strokes and cancers are agonizing ways to die.

Australia’s former Health Minister Nicola Roxon who introduced the plain packaging law has been promoting tougher controls on the world’s baccy barons.

She cites four key factors in medicos winning the fight – ‘smart researchers, very professional public servants, recognised non-government organisations and a skeptical media’ – meaning journalists have not always been swayed by denials of damage.

In 2015 cigarettes were the second largest family expense after rice, according to the Indonesian Government Statistics Bureau, with households spending three to five times more on cigarettes than on education.

Another cause for concern?

(First published in The Jakarta Post 20 June 2017)

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