A farcical decree on smoking
Cigarette companies were trembling when 650 Muslim leaders from across the archipelago gathered in Padang Panjang, West Sumatra, recently for a national conference to formulate an anti-smoking decree. Their fear did not become reality, because the conference produced but a funny decree which may not serve the real purpose of educating people to quit smoking. In opening the national conference of Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI), Vice President Jusuf Kalla called on the religious lawmakers not to issue “a frightening decree.”“I believe MUI will not issue a frightening decree; not just to declare it haram (forbidden by religion) but find a positive solution based on Islamic teaching,” Kalla said, adding that MUI should pay attention to “cigarette industry’s added value for the economy.”
That ought to happen to please the government. The vice president got what he wanted. In order not to produce a frightening decree, MUI produced a funny decree.
After a series of presumably heated debates, MUI declared that cigarette smoking would only be considered haram or religiously forbidden whenever the smoker is a child or a pregnant woman, or whenever smoking is practiced in public places.
This effectively means that adult males are still allowed to smoke, and every smoker should not be advised to kick the habit so long as he or she smokes at home or elsewhere where nobody else is affected by the smoke.
Up to that point it was crystal-clear that the government’s tragic intention was not to promote public health in order to prevent millions of people from being killed by nicotine consumption, but to prevent industry workers from losing their jobs.
In the government’s lexicon, it is more important to secure a lucrative industry that keeps on providing Rp60 trillion in excise and taxes every year than caring about the health condition of the entire population and future generations.
Even before the conference came to an end, representatives of the MUI chapter in Kudus were already shouting aloud for delegates to “consider the economic impact” of the anti-smoking decree that was about to be formulated. They represented the town where one of Indonesia’s biggest cigarette companies is situated.
To complete the story, a rival conference of vested-interest community leaders was the same week to counter the outcome of the MUI conference.
As MUI leaders were gathering in West Sumatra, Internet news provider detikcom reported from Jakarta that Transparency International had discovered MUI to be an institution where certification-related bribery was very common. It was commenting on MUI’s authority to issue the Halal (kosher) label on food products.
The highest Muslim authority immedi-ately rejected Transparency’s charges as a “groundless act of defamation.”
The Indonesian chapter of Transparency International is chaired by former minister of finance Mar’ie Muhammad who is popularly known as Indonesia’s “Mr. Clean” for his untainted reputation and credibility.
Amidst the heated political tug of war, health observers has warned that Indonesia is still the only Asian country to have refused to sign and ratify the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) which since its issuance in May 2003 has been ratified by 137 UN member countries. According to Binsar A.Hutabarat, a researcher at Reformed Center for Religion and Society, Indonesia is home to 46.16 percent of the total number of active smokers in ASEAN which as of 2004 stood at 124.6 million people and at least 20% of smokers who died across the globe each year since then were in ASEAN.
Indonesia has the worst story. According to a 2004 national census, active smokers aged 13-15 years represented 26.8 percent of the total number of smokers while those aged 5-9 years represented 1.8 percent of the total.
During the 2001-2004 period alone there was a 400 percent increase in the number of smokers in those age groups.
The government seems to be working to reduce the hazard of smoking on the population but its efforts appear artificial. Here is an example: Instead of banning smoking, it has only issued a decree to provide special places for smokers to gradually kill themselves. That is not a policy to ban smoking but is a policy to facilitate smoking.
Aris Merdeka Sirait, the secretary general of the National Commission on Child Protection, was right when he said, “a government that allows cigarette advertisements to influence children is a government that takes part in killing the children.”
The government has no intention nor courage to remove cigarette ads from the mass media because it doesn’t want to lose this sector’s tax and excise and it doesn’t have the ability to create alternative employment opportunities for industry workers.
Every month at least 400 people die of tobacco-related diseases in Indonesia. And every year millions of first-time smokers join the death row—willingly killing themselves while inflating the pockets of cigarette companies and the finance ministry.
